I don’t know about ‘me’. I’ve been around for an awfully long time; I’ve lived in virtually every part of the globe. I have seen a lot, and have avoided seeing even more – especially when it came to things that I wouldn’t have wanted to see in the first place. Just call me lucky. And, yes, I have also done a lot of things – perhaps not very well and perhaps I never tried hard enough. But I cannot complain, and if I could, what would I complain about? What would I have to complain about? I only have myself to blame. For you see, I have managed to pack an incredible amount into a life in which I have done absolutely nothing. I kid you not!

The first time I shot a gun; I simply aimed at the target and pulled the trigger. Bulls-eye! But then, the second time, instead of merely aiming and shooting, I started to think about the mechanics of what I was doing. Should I aim higher? Should I aim lower? How many yards away was the target? And, of course, I seldom ever hit the target after that – at least not until I’d put in a great many hours of practice. But even then, I the bulls-eye always managed to be in another place from where I’d fired the bullet.

So, too, with my sex life. Whereas I knew from a very early age that life was a banquet and that every single platter was literally dripping with the choicest morsels, I simply forgot why my first experience had been so simple. Because I had simply done it. But do you want to know what I did immediately after I had done it and had enjoyed it and had found that it was very simply indeed? I forgot how easy it was and started to think about how difficult it was. Consequently, I missed out on a whole lot of fun when I needn’t have missed out on it. After all, I lived in the ‘West’. I had not been indoctrinated by any punitive ideology to speak of. Yes, I was brought up with a sense of responsibility, but that is how it should be. Or at least how it ought to be. As far as I remember there was never any talk of sin. It was always, “think about the consequences.” So what went wrong? Instead of remembering what made me tick (like even the average intelligent mosquito would have done), the only incident I remembered – and which I remember to this very day – was the time my father snapped at me when I was fondling myself. Now, I don’t think he called it ‘dirty’ as so many parents so, but whatever he did say became the all encompassing cloud which overshadowed my entire childhood. And from that very moment, I started to cultivate my own ideology – one which was every bit as narrow and punitive as any to be found in any organised religion. And do you something? I have never forgiven my father. And this, of course, means that I have never forgiven myself for granting him so much power in the first place.

When I first started to become sexually active, I instantly cultivated something we never had a home. A sense of sin. And why should I have cultivated this? It wasn’t as if I ever went to church – except occasionally at evensong, for the music. And it wasn’t as though I knew anybody who actually went to church, or who even went in for that sort of thing. I don’t think I really even knew what ‘sin’ was. Perhaps I thought I was missing out on something I didn’t have? And so I wanted it. So I immediately set about punishing myself; in other words, I decided to repress myself.

Like all healthy young men on the cusp of manhood, I was a mass of jangling, postulating hormones. I didn’t need a reason to get erections. They simply happened, and if I didn’t take care of them, they took care of themselves. Riding a horse? Yes, I think we might say that many a pair of breeches were smuggled in to the washing machine and laundered without the benefit of my mother’s help. Mucking out stalls? Yes. You might say that many a pile of manure got improved by my tiny contributions. And, for God’s sake, if ever I happened to be grooming one of our stallions and he became aroused, I went through agonies. Which reminds me that when our stallions were put out to stud, they normally stood at out trainer’s breeding facilities. Now, I was no stranger to the mating of horses or dogs or pigs or even camels or elephants, and so I took their acrobatics for granted. Which means that, then as now, my voyeurism was focussed on single individuals (fortunately of the human-kind) – and when it came to two or more participants, I was not interested in it as a spectator sport. Either I was or am a party to it, or forget it.

But to get back to our stallions and their lives as rent boys and sperm-donors: I remember when mares were brought to our stallions and the owners would choose to be present to ‘witness’ the act. And every so often these owners, if they were new at the game and hadn’t really seen it before, would develop a certain ‘glow’. Now, I should make it clear that they would have been watching from behind a window in a ‘viewing room’ on the next floor. Very often, the ‘glow’ that some of these inexperienced new owners were feeling, would grow into a shining beacon. Now there was a large sofa in this room. And more than once, these owners very quickly forgot to observe what they had come to observe. As our trainer once remarked to me (for I would usually be the one to tell him, and also to describe in grossly unnecessary and vivid detail what the owners had done), “we could’a bred her to the bull, and saved your lad for a more appreciative audience.” For ‘our lad’ wasn’t getting any younger, and couldn’t always get it up when we wanted him to. And, as for the bull, the trainer had a small dairy herd, and kept a Limousin to keep the cows ‘interested’; he, unlike our stallion, was ready to go anytime, anyplace, and with anything. And he even drooled.

Sadly for me, when one of our animals was either mounting or being mounted, those were about the only times nothing happened in my nether regions. In fact, they were, perhaps, the only times – other than when I was doing my naturism thing around the house or at the beach – when I didn’t think about sex.

I remember one time we were cleaning out the septic tank, and our ‘hand’ (one was all we ever had – not counting my father) snuck up behind me and pushed me in. All very funny. Everyone laughed. And then I stripped off my clothing and stormed off to the grooming stall, where there was a shower. On the way to the shower, I got so unaccountable horny – I mean rampantly horny – that I blew my wad before I had walked thirty feet. It was probably the most powerful ejaculation I had ever experienced, and it just kept going on and on and on. And, because I was covered with shite from head to toe, it wasn’t as though I was touching anything. But never mind. However I should mention that I had – not one – but two wet-dreams the following night. So if you are having ‘trouble’, just think about your septic tank.

If only most of my sexual experiences with other people had been as good.

There was a reason why it was not – and this is really pathetic – because from the moment I proudly grew my first really grownup-looking pubic hair, my newly cultivated sense of ‘sin’ already had a stranglehold on me. But only when it came to certain things that I decided to classify as ‘sins’. Namely masturbating on school-nights. And before riding in a point-to-point or race (but not before dressage, before which the more wanking I did, the better). And being caught by my parents. Especially by my father, for by that time he was deeply worried about me, and by the fact that I didn’t seem to be cultivating any girlfriends. Never mind that I was going to boarding school, because – to his knowledge – boarding school didn’t seem to prevent any of my friends from rogering each and every girl they encountered. I simply didn’t seem to care. In any case, why did I want to fuck a girl in a ditch by the road? Was that supposed to be appealing or something? But of course, unbeknownst to my father, I had ‘Dickie’ to keep me busy. And who had time for a girlfriend when I had ‘Dickie’ ready and willing and by my side (and besides, he never asked me to make promises). And let me tell you this: come hell or high water, ‘Dickie’ never made in on to my ‘sin’ list.

Now, I haven’t mentioned ‘Dickie’ before. Dickie was not part of my crowd; he didn’t ride; he wasn’t interesting in racing. In fact, he was only interested in going into the army, and after the army, in taking over his father’s farm. I had known him for quite a long time, and we were always good mates. We were also the same age. Then one day, without any particular preamble, or without even talking about it, we simply started masturbating each other whenever we happened to get together. When we first started this routine, he had not quite entered puberty, and so when he reached his climax, it almost invariably resulted in urination. But it didn’t bother either of us – because we both knew that given time, the ‘right stuff’ would – as they say – come out. Now I want to be clear about this. There was no love between us. No crush. At no time did we want to have sex together. We just liked wanking. And since we both liked wanking a lot, we did a lot of it. And it wasn’t as though we were even turned on by each other’s penises. To tell you the truth, I don’t think we ever took any interested in looking each other’s anatomical enhancements. It was all about the wank. Every time we saw each other, it was straight out to the barn. And out they would come. And we would finish up (it was always fast and to the point), and then go our separate ways – ‘Dickie’ back to his father’s cows, and me back to the horses. And I don’t think either of us gave each other a second thought when we were not together. I seem to recall he was very good-looking and had everything in the right place, but I certainly never fanaticised about him. Not like I did about Sheila (but never mind about her – I am saving her for another chapter).

I well remember when our wanking days were over, and it coincided with ‘Dickie’s blossoming into full-fledged puberty. I had been away at school for two terms, after which I had been absent from home for an additional eight months following the death of my brother (the one that had been – when he was alive – ‘the other one’). His death was a tragedy that seemed to provide as good an excuse as any to scrounge cabins on a distant cousin’s tramp-steamer bound for Hong Kong (a voyage which spawned a second voyage – this one for the return journey – on a second and even more decrepit vessel than the first one). On neither journey did I find so much as a single wanking-mate. But, then again, neither of the tubs carried more than six or eight passengers (including the three of us), and all the other passengers seemed to be either antediluvian tea-planters or members of the diplomatic corps on leave. It was a lonely time. And I seem to remember filling the empty hours doing lessons (so ‘thoughtfully’ provided by the school, and which I mailed back to the headmaster from various ports of call), as well as playing endless games of cribbage with the chief steward, playing endless games of bridge and mah-jong with our fellow passengers, and in marching round the boat deck with a woman who was employed by one of the Intelligence services, and who had figured out exactly just how many circuits equalled five miles.

Anyway, we finally got back home, and before I had even gone out to the yard to say ‘hello’ to the horses I received a call from ‘Dickie’. “Meet me at the usual spot in ten minutes!” And so I did. The ‘Dickie’ whom I had known before was not the ‘Dickie’ who greeted me out back of the barn. Yes, he had the same face and the same goofy smile, and his accent was the same, but other than that, the boy had been supplanted by a man. He was now close on six foot one (whereas I was at the time five foot five and determined not to grow another inch); his face, though still lean and boyish – for after all, he was still only sixteen – was leaner around the jaw-line, and on his chin was a fine beginning of a beard.

“I got somat to show you,” he said, and with that he stepped out of his trousers and presented an erection that was nothing like that I had ever seen on him before. “What d’ya think?” And I had to admit he had grown into a fine-looking hunk of man.

“And wot about you?” he said with a leer. “Still the little same-o-same-o?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “The little same-o-same-o’s the same as ever.”

And that was that. ‘Dickie’ had grown up and could – as they say – get it up without any help from me. He had a girlfriend from the next village; he never went into the army, but he did take over the farm. And after a while – in the way of all things – he and his girlfriend got married, had a son and a daughter, and then a divorce.

And I’m glad it ended there, because it was just a phase, and phases are better outgrown.

No, ‘Dickie’ was never counted as a sin. But somehow masturbating on school nights still remained a bugbear, and so did looking at porn. And so did a long list of other things, some of which I have never outgrown. And so did ‘yes’ when and if I was approached on the street or in a cafe or in a bar by a stranger. And by a stranger, I mean a stranger of either sex. Because, to tell the truth, both are the same under their respective skins, and make absolutely no difference to me. Besides, my willy is definitely an equal-opportunity player. But be that as it may, let a stranger come up to me, and he or she are bound to be met by my special ‘frozen’ stare.

I continue to feel annoyed with my poor father, even though he has been dead for over thirty years. For I can still hear him telling me not to touch myself. And I also can hear him asking me once when I was twenty-three or four, if I had ever had a girlfriend? At the time, I was taking a shower and enjoying the pleasures of the warm water as it flowed down my skin, and he had walked in on me – apparently feeling I was going beyond the point of no-return. He had always tried so hard to be a good father, but he tried so hard he always overstepped the mark. And my problem was I was so bloody well brought up, it didn’t occur to me to tell him to “fuck off.” I can’t remember what I said in return. The word ‘yes’, however, was included, but otherwise it was very, and very distant. And sometimes I wonder if that is one of the reasons I have never had children? Would I have made the same mistakes as he? It was one thing to go through it myself, but quite another to pass it along. And you see, I have never entirely trusted myself.

In conclusion, what else was on my ‘sin’ list? And for that matter, what did the ‘sin’ in ‘sin’ list actually mean? I had made it up, after all; it wasn’t one of those things I had got out of a book, or which I had been threatened with from a pulpit. If it had been forced upon me from either of those sources, I don’t think it would have been as bad. However, when I had somehow ‘fixed’ on the word, I had given it a particularly evil connotation. For you see, in the ‘Church of Me’, a ‘sin’ was something you did before all your luck ran out. In other words, if I sinned on a school night, I would fail not only the next day’s tutorial but the entire term. If I sinned the night before a race or a point-to-point, I was guaranteed to break half the bones in my body. If I sinned before going out on a date, the date would inevitably have the clap or fancy someone else at the next table. And then, of course, being the idiot that I am, I was compelled to enlarge upon my list of ‘sin’, until it encompassed almost everything, including ‘asking someone home for the night’, ‘spending the night at someone else’s house’, ‘happiness’, ‘looking forward to anything (good or bad), ‘wanting to earn money’, and – last but not least – ‘actually doing anything that I was good at and doing it well’. In other words, in my book of ‘sins’ I had all the bases covered.

That being said, the one activity that never made it on to the list was sex with another person. And I rather imagine the reason I neglected to put it on the list was because I’d always thought of myself as a bit of a minger that nobody could possibly want. However, I shall let you in on a secret: in spite of my being a minger, and in spite of my being a hopeless tosser and absolute rubbish at anything and everything I had tried, the very fact that sex with another person never made it on to my ‘sin’ list, meant that I have done it a great many times – more times, in fact, than most people I’ve known. But, alas, not as many times as I could have, for although sex with others does not count as a sin, I have these pesky things called ‘hackles’, and the ‘hackles’ are accompanied by ‘alarm bells’. And just when I find someone really raunchy and downright filthy – with whom sex might even be so good it would count as a ‘sin’ – my ‘hackles’ and my ‘alarm bells’ get all hoity-toity and schoolmarmish. And they remind me that once I have had sex with another that is so good that it counts as a sin, I couldn’t ever have sex with another ‘another’ again. Or at least not without another seven years of bad luck. Or something equally as bad.

If there is one thing a man loves doing above all the other things a man is supposed to love doing above everything else, it is pissing out of doors. It is the one activity that a male was built to do, it is the one activity that a male is really good at doing, and it goes without saying, it is the one activity that a male really likes to do. And this means, of course, that it is the one activity that man is prevented from doing by every single one of those so-called moral guardians who have never done it! And having never done it, and most likely having been punished even for thinking about doing it back when they still could have done it, they therefore feel it is their moral obligation to punish everyone else – by running for political office. And once they have run for political office and have officially become politicians, they can then make it their business to prevent those who have defied the so-called moral guardians and have gone ahead and done it anyway, from ever doing it again. That is why the words and phrases, “pervert” and “wait ‘til your father gets home” and “you are under arrest” and “indecent exposure” were invented. As well as stiff fines and lengthy prison sentences.

And all because it is the male animal’s one true talent!

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about sexual predation. I’m not talking about flashing in front of the church’s stain glass window on Sunday the minute the choir launches into the abridged version of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, and I’m not talking about whipping it out in the Mall and watering the begonias in the food court. And, believe me, the last thing I am advocating is to water your grass in the back garden when your neighbours are holding a barbeque for the vicar (even though, unbeknownst to the neighbours, the vicar does it regularly in the graveyard, right on his late mother-in-law’s headstone.

What I am talking about is the joy of pissing out of doors for the sheer joy of pissing out of doors. It is as simple as that.

I realise women might have a problem with this, and I can understand their point of view. After all, pissing out of doors is something they are not designed for. It is something they do not do very well. It is something that, when they do do it, they often regret doing. For very often, when they do do it, they fall over into the puddle they have just made. But of course, that is when they cannot find a convenient log to squat on, and so they try to squat by simply squatting. And even when they do find something to support them while they squat, they frequently spray urine all over themselves like a garden hose when you’ve put your finger against the nozzle into order to increase the strength of the spray. And then they are known to say a bad word. And forget it when they try to do it standing up, especially if they are wearing their shoes. Because then, of course, having sprayed all over their shoes, they need about a roll and a half of loo paper, not only to dab themselves and their short and curlies, but also to wipe down their legs. And then – it goes without saying – they feel they have to curtail the picnic – right at the moment the steaks are perfectly barbequed – in order to run to the mall in the next town to buy a new pair of shoes. Never mind that they should have thought of going there in the first place – before the picnic even got under way – in order to pee.

In spite of the fact that women are thoroughly incompetent when it comes to pissing out of doors without making a mess, they still managed to get a law passed that permits them to do it. And in the middle of town. And in full view of passersby. Of course, according to this law they have to be pregnant, and they can only pee against the rear off-side wheel. But I ask you, what is there to prevent an otherwise unpregnant woman from merely stuffing an old cushion up her jumper and pissing against any wheel she feels like? After all, it is not as though a policeman is going to ask her to prove she is pregnant, and it is not as though most women carry around a spare pregnancy test just to prove they really are as pregnant as they say they are. At least, not without a court order, but by the time one of those is obtained, it will be too late for the woman to funnel the pee she has splashed on to the street back into her bladder. And as for the off-side business, they only snuck that into the law because there is no woman on earth who can understand the male-invented off-side rule. And therefore they can plead ignorance. But just let a man try that! The whole thing smacks of one of the early suffragettes, who obviously forgot to go to the loo before she chained herself to the railings of the Houses of Parliament.

Which reminds me, what did happen when one of those suffragettes had to go to the toilet? Did one of the friendly policemen – the one who had been beating her with his night-stick – simply halt his beating, say an apologetic, “Sorry, Madam, will you come this way, Madam,” and escort her into the building and out into the garden where – because of the fact there were no inside lady’s toilets at the time – she peed against the rear off-side wheel of the Prime Minister’s landau? And afterwards, after she had sullied the upholstery of the landau, as well as her new black dress – for according to the photographs, they all seemed to favour mourning – did she demand to be escorted to the Army & Navy Stores to replace the dress and stockings and shoes she had ruined when she had sullied the upholstery of the landau when she had inadvertently missed the rear off-side wheel? And after she had been duly escorted to The Army & Navy Stores, was she then returned to the Houses of Parliament, where – after re-chaining herself to the railings and hurling insults at the policeman – the same policeman duly picked up beating her where he’d left off?

But what about those women who snuck off while the policeman was waiting outside the ladies’ changing room in The Army & Navy Stores? Even though every man on earth knows how long it takes a woman to change her clothes, didn’t it bother him when – after three hours had passed – she still hadn’t returned? Even if he had been married to the slowest woman on earth – one of those who insisted on having ten dozen microscopic buttons on her bodice and who was obsessed with getting each and every button into its corresponding button hole (even if she had to undo each and every one of them a hundred times and start from the beginning) – wouldn’t he have grown suspicious after a while? And, if so, wouldn’t he have gone to look in the restaurant, because that is undoubtedly where the woman would have been spending the last three hours – sitting with all the other women who had evaded their friendly policemen, and who had just finished a delightful three course afternoon tea – prior to slipping out the back door?

I once rode across country with a couple acquaintances of the female persuasion, and all it all it was a most enlightening experience. Whereas usually women don’t talk a lot about their toileting habits, at least not in the presence of men who are not their husbands, these two talked about nothing else. It seemed that the summer before they had driven across Canada, from the West Coast to the East, and being the rugged, non-nonsense types, they had slept rough during the entire journey – wherever possible avoiding the official campgrounds. It goes without saying that this is not an unusual thing for nature-lovers to do, for as anyone who has ever stayed in official campgrounds at the height of the season can tell you, they can be less peaceful than a pub on one of its monthly ‘Uptown Saturday Night ‘Free Beer’ Striptease Pub Quizzes’.

Up to a point I enjoyed hearing about the women’s experiences. But then they got on to the subject of relieving themselves. And after they had thoroughly rehashed every single ‘amusing incident’ that had befallen them on each single occasion when they had stopped to spend a penny, they got on to the subject of toilet paper. Now, like many campers who are fastidious when it comes to the environment, they had originally discussed the logistics of ‘packing it out’ and carrying the soiled paper to one of the approved ‘dump stations. That plan – in the way of all such plans – went awry the first day. So after that, they decided to do without toilet paper altogether and (as they put it) employ the good, old-fashioned ‘drip dry’ method. Then, for the next two hours, I was forced to endure the ‘hilarity’ of their ‘summer of the urine-stained knickers’.

Personally, I don’t like it when males – who tend to be much more scatological than females – get carried away with this sort of idiocy. And I don’t like it any better when females resort to it either. After all, was that all there was to the holiday? Hadn’t they passed through some sort of scenery? Hadn’t they seen any wildlife? Hadn’t they met any interesting people? Or was all that merely incidental to the main purpose, which was to experience “Shitting In The Woods Like Bears?” Anyway, after about two hours of becoming increasingly pissed off, I spoiled their good time by finally opening my mouth. First of all, I made it clear that I was speaking as a man and, therefore, was not exactly conversant with their problems when it came to peeing in the woods, to which they immediately got huffy and replied that – such being the case – I should shut up and mind my own business. Well, I ignored that remark, and carried on. I said that even though I was a miserable man and – therefore – a boor when it came to women in general, I happened to be a fairly experienced camper. I also pointed out that – since men were known to shit at least as often as women (and sometimes more often seeing as how they were gross and depraved) – men also had to deal with defecating in the woods. And furthermore, when it came to clean ing up, we faced the same problems – except perhaps more so because we had hairier arses. And without pausing for a breath – because I knew if I let them get a word in edgeways, I would never hear the end of it – I asked why, since they happened to have a car with them, they hadn’t just brought along a bucket? And also a small shovel or some sort? And also a few containers of water? At this point, the driver said something not needing my input. But of course, being in full rant, I ignored her – simply to drive my message home. I suggested – for future reference – that a bucket was a handy place to squat when they had a pee. And since they were already going to sully the forest floor with their urine, it was an easy matter simply to empty the bucket. Then, I suggested that they could take the water they had been carrying in their car, and with that water they could wash themselves off. And after washing themselves off, they could rinse out the bucket. One of them tried to interrupt me by asking about the times they didn’t happen to have a car with them, to which I replied, “That’s bullshit and you know it! You never go anywhere without your bloody car. You even drive your car into your garage to pick up your other car!” And then they got all stroppy about using leaves to dry themselves off, and about how they always ended up using the wrong leaves – the ones that gave them rashes. And that was when I opened my mouth one too many times and mentioned buying a guide book for local flora. At which they said yelled, “All men were alike,” to which I retaliated, “At least a man pisses; we wouldn’t be caught dead wee-ing or tinkling.”

Interestingly enough, I never saw them after that, and they even stopped sending me their tie-dye greeting cards for Christmas.

But back to the unbridled joy of men pissing in the great outdoors. Unlike women, who seem to like to urinate in packs, men – at least when indoors – tend to treat it as a solitary exercise. For example, when standing at a urinal when there is another man standing beside them, they cover themselves and look straight ahead. Setting aside accepted etiquette, it is a territorial thing. A man urinating is a vulnerable man.

However, get a man outdoors, and man reverts to a more primitive state. Whereas in a restaurant, two or three men sitting at the same table would never even think about going to the toilet at the same time – which is what women seem to do. However, get them outside and at the edge of the car park, and they will have a grand old group piss-out. And (excepting in certain cultures where it is taboo for a man to look at another man’s private parts) it is pretty much universal. In fact, pissing in the great outdoors seemed to be one of the few activities during which even sworn enemies can call a truce.

In every single country in which I have lived (except for those dominated by Islam) I have seen men – young and old and in between – celebrating this one particular moment together. No matter whether it’s on the side of a road or on a mountain top or on the edge of a cliff, the scenery is always better if it’s enjoyed while in the company of fellow pissers.

It goes without saying that pissing out of doors can be a risky business. First of all, right at the point of no-return, when there is no chance of turning it off, the wind is bound to change. And if you are in a group – all standing in a line in the usual way for you never piss in a circle, all facing inwards – and the wind resorts to the sort cheap whiplash joke it saves for such occasions, you’ll find that all men who have always pissed like men in the great outdoors, can all turn together, as if by some secret signal. So clever are they that it’s only when the wind double-crosses them that they end up pissing on their neighbour’s breeks.

I know quite a few men who – given the choice – will always piss outdoors. Even when they are at their own house. Perhaps it’s a throwback to bygone days when we used to mark our territory. Who knows? It makes sense to me.

Several years ago, I found myself staying at a small, disused hill farm in the mountains. Close to the shack in which I lived there was a family of foxes. At the time, I was reading a book by Farley Mowat – Never Cry Wolf – in which the protagonist (I believe based on Mowat himself), decided to see how well the wolves would respect the territory he himself would establish by using his own urine trail. And so, I decided, why not try it myself. And so I did. With the same results. After encircling my little home with a trail of piss, I went inside and waited and watched. Sure enough, the next morning, I found that the male fox had marked his territory just outside mine. I was ecstatic! And I felt that, for once in my life, I had actually done something that mattered, and which was in tune with what nature had intended.

But back to pissing outdoors in more mundane surroundings. It goes without saying, the minute you get caught out when you are walking alone along a completely deserted road – without a vehicle in sight – the second you open your flies and start to spray the countryside, there will be, not only one car coming from one direction, but ten cars coming from both directions. And they will all pass each other right at the point at which you’re standing. It never fails. Of course, you could always turn around and salute the passengers, but I really would not recommend it. Because at least four of the cars are bound to have little children riding in the back, the parents of which will inevitably be city dwellers that will look upon any man with open flies as a sex offender – no matter that he happens to be innocently pissing at the time his flies were open. In this day and age, it is better to play it safe than to see your name placed on the sex-offenders list for pissing in front of a child.

Ah… but pissing into the wind and in the middle of a gale: that is when a clown like me feels most alive. And when I also happen to be standing on a cliff facing out to a north Atlantic sea, I am as close to heaven as I am ever likely to be. And what about splashing? What about splashing? I am standing in a bloody gale, aren’t I! Or as they say, “Innit!”

I’m not exactly an old hand when it comes to online dating. In fact, I’m not exactly an old hand when it comes to off-line dating. Come to think of it, even though I have never tried them, I might suggest that I would make less of a mess on inline skates than I have on the dating scene. In other words, I am potentially armed and dangerous, and ready for a rumble.

My past experience in online dating (and yes, there was only one) proved to me – yet again – that I am willing to believe anyone, and that I would fall in love with a garbage truck if it whispered to me often enough it was really a Morgan roadster in disguise. So yes, I fell, if not in love, then into a state of near-fatal curiosity; it also cost me a fair amount of money and a lot of wasted time. Fortunately there were no broken hearts, at least not on my side, for if truth be told even before I had flown halfway round the world I was already hearing the alarm bells clanging in my head. And needless to say, less than half a minute after I met her, I was already re-examining my options (and yes, that entire cautionary tale shall get an airing). Fortunately for me – and, yes, it was a ‘fortunately’ – within two days she was rude to a waitress, thus giving me an out. For in spite of all my failings, if there in one thing I will not tolerate it is rudeness towards a server or a salesperson. That being so, I simply stood up, went over to the waitress, paid her, apologised to her, and left, thus severing in the bud a non-relationship that would have been a disaster had it blossomed.

Now, the fact that I rushed into this little contretemps was my fault. No-one had pointed a gun at my head, and in spite of the fact that the hairs on the back of my neck were not only tingling, but shrieking, I still went ahead with it, saying merrily, “Well, at least it’s another country I’ll get to know!”

That episode aside, I have always been sceptical when it comes to dating services. Especially one accessed over a computer, because even if you are serious about your quest and you write an extremely detailed and lengthy profile – a profile that should leave no doubt in the mind of even the mouldiest cabbage what and who you are looking for, it always appears as though the computer has not only not looked at what you have written, but that whatever is written is is not specific enough; therefore the computer will simply ignore it; and usually being an American computer, it will decide it knows better than you do what it is you want. Then, of course, one must take into account the inevitable fact that the individuals who are surfing through the site never bother to read any of the details which you have so carefully and lovingly provided. But I am learning. Perhaps more slowly than most, but I am on the way. In other words, I am now leaving absolutely nothing to chance. And I’m also having a lot of fun.

First of all, let me say that I did check out my current dating site beforehand. The first piece of good news is that it is free. And by that I mean exactly what I say. In other words, it is not one of those ‘free’ sites that professes to free, until, of course, the minute you institute a search, at which point it informs you that – oops! – it is unable proceed to the next step until you upgrade to their premium service. As far as I am concerned, either it’s free or it’s not, and if it’s not free, it should say so on the box instead of wasting my time.

I have been so excited (it does not take much to please me) that I almost forgot to say that this site actually vets the photographs. So if you are looking for a man, you are not suddenly inundated by a lot of images gleaned from the Bel Ami gay porn site. Not that I have anything against these images, but since I already know what most of their models look like (I am very thorough when it comes to research) I tend to be turned off when some forty-eight-year old bricklayer from Barnstable claims to be the owner of that very lovely and perfectly-form Croatian penis. For you immediately suspect that he might have something to hide, such as the fact that he weighs two hundred stone, is covered with fur, and lives with his mother and two-hundred budgerigars. In a caravan. In a halting site. Just next to the nuclear power plant.

In my humble opinion, looking for a possible long-term relationship is not like looking for a bit on the side. That being the case, any man who feels obliged to display his wears to attract someone’s attention, is probably not in it for the long haul. After all, during a long haul you do have plenty of time to study the scenery. And in any case, since this is not a gay dating service specifically targeting the meat-locker trade, but rather caters to everyone, it’s actually refreshing to see someone’s face and discover that they actually do live somewhere and have a life. However, if you are not interested in that, but rather in salivating over a wall-to-wall exhibition of rampant photo-shopped penises, here is the URL: http//: www. rampantphotoshoppedpenises.com.

So anyway, what I am leading up to is this (and no, I am not an employee of the site in question and have nothing to gain from saying anything nice about it, except perhaps they will stop sending me notes begging me to “Please find someone and leave us alone!”): it is not a porn dating site. And if it is, its hidden agenda is squirreled away so craftily in one of their five hundred plus tests, that I have been unable to unearth it.

No, seriously. It is not a porn site, and this to me is refreshing, simply because most of them are. I know it’s probably a case of supply and demand (or at least ‘presumed’ supply and demand). However, just as I don’t think most women are pining for men who ask the size of their breasts the first time out, any bloke who asks the size of my willy in his first message, before we have even introduced ourselves, may not get the response he is expecting (unless of course, he offers me a month’s holiday on his yacht and promises ‘cross my heart’ not to slit my throat the minute we enter International waters). But back to this pesky ‘tell us about your willy’ question. Now, to be perfectly blunt, the reason I do not like this type of question is not because my willy has anything to be ashamed of. After all, he is what he is and he is in his original wrapper and, all in all, he is rather a cunning little devil. He has never had one of those ‘operations’ on his nether region or had his head chewed off or had one of those interesting and exotic infections or viruses named after Greek gods. Nor does he have any bad habits that are any worse than those of other models, either foreign or domestic. And he has never, ever been subject to a recall. In other words, his warranty – by some miracle – is still good. But the thing is, a willy does come attached to a body and with a body comes a face and with a face comes a personality, and sometimes – though not always – a personality comes with a brain. Then – if you are really lucky – there will be a sense of humour lurking somewhere in the shadows. And perhaps even a heart. Yes, yes, yes, there is always baggage (for none of us has lived in a vacuum), as well as a few of those tricky character flaws. And then, of course, there is always the inevitable cultural nonsense to deal with. Yada yada yada.

Now lest you think I am going all politically correct when it comes to body shape and size and physical attributes, I am not. For every one of us has a certain something that makes us tingle. And there’s no point in someone trying to convince you that ‘in time you’ll come to love them’, because it’ll never happen. And puleeeese don’t even think about bringing up the issue of discrimination, because as far as I know, a relationship is not a job offer. Unless, of course, it is; but in that case I suggest you ring up your local MP in the middle of the night and ask him. Or her.

But, to continue with this bothersome business of physical ecstasies and vomits, what happens if all the right boxes are ticked, but other person – no matter how fastidious he or she may been – has the wrong smell. Or the wrong body shape. Or tastes like Chicken Tikki Masala when all you like is deep-fried bacon and sausage pizza? It’s called a physical reality. So, yes, one has got to be straightforward and upfront – and, yes, if certain physical dimensions are important to you, you have to address them – and right away – otherwise you are a time-waster. However, please remember it’s not a porn site. There are plenty of those available, many of which no longer come with computer worms or Trojan horses. Not even when the models on the sites actually wear Trojans themselves.

So, what do I want? How do I know who I will eventually fall for? I may like to say that I do not want a man young enough to be my grandson; in other words, a lover and companion who, while he may be physically an adult, is still – emotionally-speaking – an adolescent. Do I really want to be his father? That being said (and I have been there and done that and when it ended it had nothing to do with the disparity in age), chemistry is a wonderful, miraculous thing. We have to give it free-reign and let it play. For if the right person comes along – and I mean the right person – maybe it’s worth taking a chance. I certainly will. Now, I know how old I am. I am 62. I do not deny it. And not only that, but I do not wish to be any younger. For I have earned every single second of every minute of every hour of every day of my life. And when I look at people twenty years younger – at that truly awful transitional age of 40 – I am so glad I am not there. I am so thankful I do not have all that shite that forty-year-olds have to struggle through. It is a morass, a swamp, a nightmare. It is the age when you are still hanging on to your ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ and to all your illusions. It is an age when you are still deluded enough to think that you can pass for 20 or 25 or 29 (if only you spend enough time in the gym or pumping Botox under your skin or adding hair extensions or attending the right support groups or changing all the light bulbs in your office and house to a flattering pinky-peach colour). I was a living nightmare at that age. And almost all of the forty-year-olds I encounter force me to remember what a miserable plank I was. The memories make me cringe, but it is a grand thing – both for me and for the world at large – that there are a great many exceptions to the rule. And I can say this freely, because most of my friends happen to be – quite coincidentally – that exact age.

So, what is it I really want? Initially, on one particular question in the site’s ‘personal details’ section, I had hedged. In other words I had left too many options. Where it asked what I was I looking for, I did not narrow the field down sufficiently. After all, I do like women and if the right woman came along, I would say ‘yes’, and having said ‘yes’, I would be faithful to that decision. So, with that in mind, that was the only question in my ‘details’ in which I did not specify a man. But I thought I was covered, for when it came to my profile, I was very straightforward. Although I am bisexual, I want to live with a man. However, because I had fudged that one particular question, the computer inevitably zeroed in on that to the exclusion of all else. Consequently, I only got replies from single mothers looking for someone who would give them a little love. In other words, a home. And many of these women were desperate – at least, going by what they wrote in their profiles and in their notes. And I am sorry, because I know (at least theoretically) how tough things must be for them. However, to be perfectly candid, in no place in my profile did I ever mention women (except in that one fudge), and I always specified ‘no children.’

After a couple of weeks went by and I received nothing but solicitations from these single mothers (none of whom had anything in common with me; otherwise I wouldn’t have worried about it), I suddenly remembered that one single question that I had fudged. So what I did was to un-tick that one box where I was asked if I was bisexual. And since then, every single suggestion and solicitation has been – if not spot on – at least intriguing. Problem solved.

To get back to age. Now, no man of 62 – providing he is reasonable fit and in good health – feels his age. And even when he looks in the bathroom mirror to shave, he doesn’t look 62. But, as we all should know – but choose to ignore – bathroom mirrors are liars. But even if we try to ignore our age; those younger than us certainly do not. Nor, when all is said and done do we really look any younger. I well remember the day – a couple of years ago – when I was in Ireland and happened to run into a good friend who was just a few years older than I. Now, she was a very good-looking woman and certainly did not look her age. However, while we were walking down the street together, we had what you might call a reality check. What happened was this. In a shop window there was a very large mirror, and it was angled in such a way as to reflect passers-by. And so, there we were, happily chatting and thinking about stopping somewhere for a cup of tea, when – simultaneously – we were confronted by these two broken-down-looking old people who were dressed in clothing just like ours. And we even commented on it, and agreed that the two of them should probably wear something more subdued. Needless to say, the two broken-down-looking old people were the two of us. I really think it was one of the most unpleasant moments in my life. Now, to be frank, the one or people who’ve known me since the days of the Neanderthals have been rather outspoken about my appearance. “God, you’ve gotten old,” being the worst example. Granted, at the time, I had just been crushed by a falling horse and was looking for all the world like a wrecked car, but still honesty is honesty, no matter what the excuse.

Therefore, when someone specifies they are looking for someone, say 35 to 55, I am very cautious. I only reply if everything else looks like a ‘possible’ – but I start off by telling them my age. Because – as I have already said – we give our preferences for a reason. And, although it is hard when you get older to realise you are getting older, you’re not going to find anyone if you are not honest. And, in any case, you are not going to pull the wool over their eyes. And to get back to a possible scenario wherein I am approached by a twenty-one year old, I would ask one question of him. “Yes, now it might be OK now, but how about in ten years’ time, when you will only be thirty-one, but I shall be seventy-two?” And if he says, “I know, and I still want you,” then I would have to give it serious thought. It goes without saying that it hasn’t happened, and I am not deluded enough to think it might. And, quite frankly, although it was no doubt lurking in the back of my mind – in the place where all our fantasies fester – I really hadn’t given it any conscious consideration. Yes, I am in good health, yes, I do look at a young person and admire his or her beauty. But that’s life. And don’t forget, in twenty years, a twenty year old will be a forty year old, whereas I will be an eighty year old. And believe you me, when I am an eighty year old, the last thing I shall want to deal with will be a forty year old.

As you are no doubt aware, I have not mentioned the likelihood of a relationship with someone much older than I. There is a reason I have not addressed this probability, and it’s called panic. And it deserves – and shall get – a whole chapter of its own. When I can steel myself for it. And stop wanting to run out of the room screaming. But let’s put it this way: it has everything to do with the fact that so many older men seem to fall to bits. And I am not sure I am ready to nurse another person through a lingering decline and death. At least not yet.

So ANYWAY, what is it I want? I mean, what do I really, really want? Even setting aside all the sundry interests and activities I have mentioned in my profile, what would make my life wonderful? Make my heart sing? Yes, it’s all very well for me to mention National Hunt racing and sheepdog trials, and Crofting and rare-breed pigs and sheep. And, yes, it’s important that I talk about my love of words, and comedy and Improv and storytelling. But underneath all these things – and yes, they are just ‘things’ – what am I and what do I need? Let me tell you.

I am a puppy. And all I want is what every puppy wants. A warm place to sleep, room to frolic, enough food to keep my belly full. And someone who loves me. And who I can love in return. Enough said?

By now, you all will have heard about Mrs. Bichan, and if you are not familiar with her actual name, you will be aware of existence, either as a compatriot of a certain Miss Frame or as my grandmother’s ‘so-called housekeeper’. Miss Frame (who as far as I know did not have a first name), was a severe and unsmiling spinster from somewhere in the Inner Hebrides, and she dedicated much of the latter part of her life to bludgeoning our rockery into obeying her will. A great deal of time and effort was expended in diverting a small but enthusiastically independent-minded stream so that its course might spill down an impressive cascade and into a lovely hidden garden. And it says a lot about her strength of character that she herself transported the majority of the boulders and trees and plants to the chosen site herself, either in an ancient Ford tractor or when that failed her, in an antediluvian barrow. To my knowledge, Miss Frame had only two sets of clothes. The first of which – it goes without saying – was comprised of an uncompromising black coat and skirt, stout black shoes worn with dark grey Balbriggan stockings, a dark grey linen blouse and a simple strand of pearls. This was, of course, what she wore on Sundays, and which she continued to wear when, late in the afternoon, she paid her regular Sunday visit to Mrs. Bichan. Her other set of clothing consisted of a greenish brown tweed skirt and coat, which she wore with ancient brogues, the inevitable Balbriggan stocks (in a shade of dark brown), a homespun blouse fastened at the throat by a silver-mounted stag-horn broach and a battered felt hat. Her hair was cut short and was of an indeterminate greyish brown. As far as I know, I never I saw her in any other outfit. That being said, I must point out that women of her generation expected to go through life with one good suit for Sundays (and in which they would eventually be buried) and one for every day, as well as, perhaps a summer frock or two (although I don’t think Miss Frame was really the summer frock type). Stockings were well-cared for and darned; ditto underwear. They were not of the consumer generation, nor did they have access to cheap clothes churned out in sweatshops in Third World Countries. Everything they wore spoke of quality, and they made everything last. And when anything finally fell apart, they would bring in that convenient personage, ‘The Daily Dressmaker’, to salvage the wreckage and refashion it into something absolutely identical.

Now, I may point out that Mrs. Bichan did not attend the same church as Miss Frame. In fact, Mrs. Bichan was a Fraser and, therefore, a Catholic. A very devout Catholic. On the other hand, every drop of Miss Frame’s blood had been squeezed through a staunch Presbyterian ringer. The difference in religion was, by mutual agreement, something they never discussed. However, as a matter of principle – although their respective churches were but a hundred yards from each other and they both lived side by side in tidy semi-detached houses – they never accompanied each other to church on the Sabbath. And they never partook of Sunday dinner together either. This meant, that they both ate identical roast dinners prepared by their own hands in their respective kitchens; for when it came to Sunday, Miss Frame resolutely refused to break bread with what she considered the Whore of Babylon, and Mrs. Bichan preferred to share a glass of wine with a statue of the Virgin Mary and half of dozen of her favourite saints, including St. Magnus and King James VI of Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots and William Wallace.

Neither lady officially worked on the Sabbath. That being said, come Sunday teatime and both of them – along with the ever-present Sophie – were to be found in our kitchen, sitting round the large table and eating a robust tea. Now this was what they had done long before my parents had moved into the house; it was a tradition. It was also their way of saying, “we are not toiling on the Sabbath, but we are here. And should we happen to walk upstairs at dinnertime and have a tray of cold food in our hands, we shall leave it on the sideboard.” Of course, they never did – nor were they asked to do it. That wasn’t part of their jobs. But, then again, it was tradition.

I should point out that be both my parents were extremely good cooks and that Mrs. Bichan was actually a very bad cook; not only that, but she never actually cooked for anybody except for herself, Miss Frame, Sophie (who was nothing if not a menace in the kitchen and who was a wiz at burning pots) and James, Mrs. Bichan’s much older brother. Now as I remember it, James’ principal function was to sit in the garden, urge Miss Frame to be brave and work harder, comment unfavourably on the weather, and smoke his pipe. He, like his sister, had been there for years, and I don’t think he had ever done anything else. It was his life’s work. Another tradition.

Now, James eventually overstayed his welcome and progressed from being a mere nuisance to being a health hazard. It happened like this. When I was of an age when my entire focus was on becoming a jump jockey, any available time I had when I was home from school was spent either in our small yard or on our gallops. From the start I was always honest about my shortcomings, but one thing I had going for me – and perhaps it was the only thing – was that I was determined and I was extremely disciplined. However, for the most part I chose to ride out at the yard of a nearby trainer who happened to be in the employ of my father. To be honest, he wasn’t really a very good trainer, and out horses weren’t very good horses (I’m not talking about our show-jumpers or show-horses who were). But he was very much a gentleman of the old school and, what is more, he liked me. And so, he let me ride out every morning, rain or shine, and in return I willingly mucked out and groomed his charges; the old man also helped me learn the basics and let me know in no uncertain terms how privileged I was to be allowed to work with horses.

Whenever I was riding, whether it was on one of my show jumpers in the ménage or on one of our National Hunt no-hopers on the gallops, James liked to come and watch. By which I mean he would transfer his bottom from the old bench on which he perched to hector Miss Frame, to another old bench facing the ménage. Or, conversely, when I was out on the gallops, he would lean against a tree and tap his pipe against his shoe and ask me what time I was going to quit and eat lunch.

James’s most serious problem was his pipe. The first time it came a cropper was when one day, just as I was approaching a series of hurdles, he did his usual thing and tapped his pipe against his shoes. Only this time, the tobacco in the pipe was still burning. Therefore, when he tapped it, the burning tobacco jumped out and burnt the back of his hand. Whereupon he flung away the pipe, started waving his hands around, went into a jig and started wailing. In the meantime, the pipe had flown across the gallops and hit my horse on the nose. The horse in question was a gelding named Hannibal Ben who was a very steady and reliable (if rather not particularly fast) hurdler who had lost many a race and point-to-point in the course of his long and easygoing lifetime. While he tended to be very blasé when it came to moving fast, he was also a joy to ride; he leapt like a deer and was a perfect school horse. Be that as it may, when James’ pipe hit him on his nose, Ben reared up and took off in the opposite direction – with me clinging to his neck. He not only cleared all the hurdles and fences in record time (thus proving that he was not so slow after all) but he eventually tried to jump a very high yew hedge. After which I flew through the air in one direction and he continued running until he was exhausted. My father, who had watched the whole thing, marched straight in to Mrs. Bichan, who was as usual sitting in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea. He warned her that if her brother ever went close to the horses again, he would be thrown off the property. He also made it clear that as much as he liked James, James was only allowed to stay as a favour – because he realised that James needed looking after; but could he please leave his pipe at home? My father obviously had no respect for tradition.

Needless to say, the following week poor James – still carrying his pipe – wandered into the yard and accidentally set fire to a bale of hay. One horse panicked and was injured as a result. And James was seen no more; nor did Mrs. Bichan ever mention him again. Now, one interesting discovery that was made as a result of this mess: it was that James was not her brother after all, but her husband. Mrs. Bichan, however, being extremely old-school, was terrified she would lose her place if we knew she was married. It was a tradition.

It goes without saying that the revelation came from Miss Frame, herself. For she had just had ‘words’ with Mrs. Bichan and was in a sulk.

But back to the saga of the two household fixtures (and fittings): Miss Frame and Mrs. Bichan. Miss Frame, it should be remembered, was (as they say) not like other women. She had ‘only one hole – like a chicken’, a fact that my father gleaned whilst eavesdropping in the kitchen one day, and immediately told everyone within hearing. Now, since this deformity was never discussed in detail – at least not in front of me – I’ve never really grasped the finer points. Instead, if ever I’ve thought of it at all, it has always been in reference to a fowl. And to this very day, whenever that poor benighted – and utterly respectable lady – comes to mind, I immediately think of her as some sort of extremely ancient, scraggy hen, dressed in brownish green tweeds.

Shortly after my father stumbled upon the secret of Miss Frame’s never-before-mentioned nether regions, he happened to find himself in the kitchen again (probably again doing something inconspicuous such as making a sandwich or making a pot of coffee) when he once more heard the two woman whispering something in the corner. Now, if there was anything that set his ears a’flutter, it was the lowered voices of Miss Frame and Mrs. Bichan. And, once again, he hit the jackpot. For this time, he heard the memorable phrase (issued with heavy breathing and great sibilance – always a sign that something important was in the offing), ‘pelvic floor’. Needless to say, he knocked over the coffee pot and fled the room. And in so doing, he missed the rest of the conversation. However, for the next few nights, ‘pelvic floor’ was the principal topic of conversation at the dinner table. And it also launched a whole series of stories. In other words, ‘The Pelvic Floors I Have Known.’

I have to admit that, in common of most members of my sex, a pelvic floor is very much a mystery. I’m sure that if I should Google it, I would find a perfectly straightforward and boring definition, as well as a probable Wikipedia entry. However, why ruin a good thing and take the fun out of life?

Let me explain something. Mrs. Bichan was somewhat broad in the beam; .she had what used to be called ‘good childbearing hips’. In other words, there was plenty of room down ‘there’. And since she was clearly never going to occupy that particular area with children (or even with a litter of kittens), I found that I could entertain myself for hours at a time simply by coming up with various and sundry practical usages for her pelvic floor, the space of which was obviously being wasted. And since I know for a fact that Mrs. Bichan hated waste almost as much as she hated Presbyterians (Miss Frame being the only exception), I’m sure that if she were alive now, she would appreciate the time and effort I am putting in.

The most obvious use, it goes without saying, was as a dance floor. Now, when I was a kid I knew all there was to know about dance floors for the simple reason that there was a ballroom in the house – an incredibly draughty space which was only ever used by my father when he took his morning jog in the nude. And I know he did it every morning – at least as long as we lived in the house – for I used to escort him on my tricycle. Around and around and around he would go, his bits flapping up and down, and there I would be, peddling away like mad, trying as best I could to match his pace. Then, of course, during the months when one of our border collies assumed I was just another variety of sheep and was in need of supervision, it would tag along beside me, biting my ankles and trying to herd me into obscure corners.

Be that as it may, having had a personal experience as regards ballrooms, I was perfectly able to translate what I knew into that magnificent space between Mrs. Bichan’s ‘hind legs’.

Now, having established that our so-called housekeeper was none other than a walking ballroom, I quickly set about arranging a few soirees, with musicians, lots of good food, and even a horse or two. As for music, I decided that – although at the time I wasn’t sure what they were – it might be fun to have some drinking songs. Miss Frame, of course, all dressed up as a mother hen, would be serving punch, and Mrs. Bichan herself would lead the dancing. Although how she could dance in her own pelvic ballroom did give me a few minutes’ pause. After which I thought: it’s my story; I can do anything I want. And if it hadn’t been for me, Mrs. Bichan might have gone to her grave without knowing she had a ballroom of her very own.

Of course, the ballroom scenario didn’t last very long, simply because it was so boring. So for a time, I held show-jumping competitions in her pelvic floor, with my main competitors being (once again) Miss Frame – this time disguised as a Guinea Fowl who just happened to have won Best Miniature Horse at the Horse of the Year Show in Wembley. Again, Mrs. Bichan put in an appearance – this time as a judge, dressed – of course – in one of those dreadful purple velvet evening gowns they used to wear, and with a potted plant in her cleavage. Of course, the trainer from next door was there, but only to cheer me on (something he never did in real life). It goes without saying I won all the time, so eventually it got as boring as the ballroom idea.

After the show-jumping came a women’s hockey team, with Miss Frame and Mrs. Bichan as the two opposing captains. As I remember it, these fixtures were always extremely violent, and they would always end with the captains ganging up on me and smashing me to bits with their hockey sticks.

One thing I should mention: Sophie was never allowed into to any of my Pelvis Floor Fantasies. And it also seemed that, although they were always invited, my parents never actually showed. But my brother – Ol’ Whatisname, always did. This in spite of the fact that I never once invited him. But there he would be, lurking behind a pillar, dressed in black bombazine and studying his particle physics.

In the end, I gave up thinking about possible uses for Mrs. Bichan’s pelvic floor, and simple rented it out as a bingo hall. After all, I knew that Mrs. Bichan enjoyed her Wednesday night flutter at the Church Hall (an activity for which Miss Frame held her in contempt), but at the back of my mind was the realisation that Bingo Halls in fact made a lot of money. That being the case, simply by renting Mrs. Bichan’s extra-wide abdominal cavity twice each day and with added pensioners’ specials on Monday and Thursday mornings, within a very short time I could afford to retire Hannibal Ben and buy something that might even take me to the winner’s enclosure at our local point-to-point. And from there, my new mount and I could progress to Ayr, and from Ayr we could go to Perth, and from Perth we could go to Aintree, and from Aintree we could go to the Cheltenham … and it all would take place inside Mrs. Bichan’s Pelvic Floor.

Inevitably, as in the way of all things, the Presbyterians scuppered by plans by buying Mrs. Bichan’s Pelvic Floor and banning bingo. Therefore, I had to be content to turning it into a student hostel, and installing Miss Frame and Mrs. Bichan as managers. It was an occupation that suited both of them, for it allowed them free-reign when it came to uncovering the filthy habits of young people. And well do I remember the day when they emerged triumphant from a young lad’s room, denouncing him as the Devil’s Own Seed. For even though he had secured his backpack with seventeen padlocks, their sharp noses had sussed out his stash of ‘dirty pictures’! Not only did they send him away from the hostel with a flea in his ear, but they wrote a severe letter of condemnation to his mother – a letter in which they also managed to cast doubt on her fitness as a mother and upon his supposed legitimacy. Upon casting him out into the cold, Miss Frame and Mrs. Bichan marched straight out into the garden. They lit a very large bonfire, and – then and there – the ‘burnt his dirty pictures’.

Now, I bet you didn’t even suspect that Mrs. Bichan’s Pelvic Floor had a garden, did you? That shows what you know. For it was a tradition.

This is a tale off an innocent young lad and an evil auldfelkyo called Owld Mither Morag NicOxter-Arroo. Every word herein is sad, and every word is truly true.

Now, many many eons ago, long before there was a sun up in the sky or an earth on down in the mud, there lived a wee peedie ting in a bog on the western slopes of a far-off island. T’was in the north sea, somewhere between Orkney and Norway and The Rose of Tralee (which was for a time a gently mysterious floating nest of flotsam, long before it drifted in the wild Atlantic tide downwards ever downwards tae what was tae become The Kingdom of Kerry; once there, the Rose was soon proclaimed: The Fairest of all the Jetsam, and we all know the rest of that story).

This lad’s name was peedie Willy o’The Briny Breeks and he lived alone in his little croft with his mountainy sheep and his dog and his chicken and his pet herring, Misther Maet. Now, peedie Willy had always lived alone, ever since he had found himself wrapped up in swaddling and in a basket outside his own front door. So, of course, being the generous-hearted peedieting he was, he had taken himself in, washed himself off, changed his little nappy, and set him down on his potty.

Now it had never occurred taepeedie Willy that he didn’t have a mither. For he had never had one, had never heard of such a thing, and wouldn’t have known what to do with one had he had one. In fact, it was just as well that he found his own peedie self out front of the house every morn, and not a mither. For having lived with himself for a great many years – perhaps even two hundred or more – he knew exactly what to do with his own peedie ting. However, had it been his mither that he had found on the stoop, he would’a have been in a steer. God only knows what me might have done if he’d he unwrapped such an awkward and not-very-nice-looking scrag from its swaddling? First of all, she would’na been what he was expecting; secondly, she would’na been a beautiful sight for his sore eyes (he had – as ever – stayed up all night reading without remembering to light the lamp). And, if truth be told, he might’a thought she was rookel so owld, that he’d best hurl her intae the sea. And thirdly, she would’na been the same as a he. She would’a been a she. Now, peedie Willy had heard rumours tae the effect that there was such a thing as a she, but as far as he knew, one had never been seen on the far-off isles of the greatest of northern-most seas. And had it been a she he had discovered on his doorstep instead of a peedie he, what on earth would he have done? What could he have done? For when you are but a peedie Willy, do you even know when you are faced tae face with a she? After all, when all is said and done, you have never ever seen such a dastardly, rookel-some baste as a she? “What is it?” you cry. “What is it indeed?” For as up is up and down is over there, it is not a he as you had expected it tae be?

Unbeknownst to peedie Willie, he had had a mither after all, but he had never seen her, not even once; nor had he ever set eyes upon a creature so fair and winsome as a bonny red-haired lass fae far beyond the western seas, otherwise known as the distant isles called Hebrides.

Not that this was what hismither actually looked like. For although I have just described what a lovely she well might’a been, I have really described another and not his own mither. No, it was not really she. For if truth be told, his ancient mither – called Owld Morag NicOxter-Arroo – was none other than the infamous hoyden and slapper and slag, who worked fae dusk tae dawn and all through the day on the docks far tae the south of the beautiful, far-off isles of the northern-most sea. And while she might once have been called a sturdy young heifer of a wench – that is, when the lights were set low and two bottles of Scotch were a’fermentin’ in a punter’s puggy – she was now a heuved and withered owld scrag who could fetch but tuppence three farthings when the wind was blowing fae the west and she was facing tae the east. Owld Morag had but a single tooth in her foetid, snirly, auld mouth, and a goitre under her throat. She had earwigs breeding in her left eye-socket and her nose drooped down like a stoat. Not a single hair grew on her wizened head, for her dog had chewed it all off, but she did have a fine crop of fur on her crotch, in which she grew tatties and leeks and was known to hide four dozen bottles of Scotch.

Peedie Willy knew not that he had been of a woman born, and if someone had told him such a tale of woe, he would’a been aghast. For although he had been ‘round for a very long time, and knew about the breeding of sheep, he had taken for granted that he himself was really rather unique.

It therefore came as a great surprise, when one day there on his door there came a loud knock. The first thing he thought was that he’d be there again, to which he’d replied to his peedie self who was a’sittin on the pot, “Pray tell, but is the world soon to be completely populated by me?”

But alas and alack, that wasn’t to be. For afore him was not basket containing a tiny, fresh-whalped peedie Willy so fair, but something that looked – for all the world – like it had been buried in shite for a very long time, and it really did give him a scare. The first thing out of his peedie mouth when face-to-face with this felkyo so vile (for a felkyo she did indeed turn out tae be, and not his poor owl mither who she’d knifed in a fight over a sailor from some other primitive isle), was a yelp of sheer terror, followed by a none-too-friendly, “Jeezus Howlee Mither o’God!”

But after she had slapped him upside and down and narrowed her eyes tae a glint, he took a deep breath and straightened his tie and affixed a smile tae his face “Pray tell?” he asked with a shite-eating grin, “And exactly who are you?” At which point he put on his specks and examined her through and through. “And why are you so impossibly old? For as sure as there is owld crap in your drawers, you’ll never see me a’sleep with your whores.” Tae which he added, “And keep yerself far away fae me boars!” It was then he peered intae her rheumy eye, the one that’d not fallen out, and he said with a sneeze that was just like a cold, “Feckin’ Christ, what a grand sewer of mould.”

The fact that he’d yelped, “Jeezus!” straight into her face, did nothing to improve the owld witch’s mood. She fell intae a swoon, and when she’d revived, she clouted him round his head with her spoon.

Now here is where the tale turns sad, so listen well my friend, for the felkyo really was the vilest felkyo in the land; she’d been whelped not on a beach in the fog, but in a filthy ditch right down in a bog. And why had she come tae torment him this way? Simple: she wanted to marry his hog.

Now if truth be told, and it’s truth I shall tell, mankind was not always the same as ‘tis now.

For in the beginning, when God made a man, He’d said, “Here, please use this long detachable spout.” For it had so many uses, just like a hose, and with a small nozzle one could turn on and off at your will. And when you had done, and you’d had all your fun, you twisted it off and hung it up high, from a nail right over your sill.

But poor Willy, he shouldn’a said those aafil words tae the felkyo. For her spoon was a wand, and she took her revenge, by cursing all men with a blight.

And, from that minute on, instead of a detachable, utterly manageable, spout such as God had truly designed, she’d forced man tae wear a nozzle so small, that no matter how clever or how short or how tall, it could never be aimed intae anything at all.

So remember, my lass, when your lad goes tae the loo and leaves a loch greater than Ness, it was never his plan tae splash on the wall, nor for his sweenkletae make such a mess.

For you see, though he may have the mind of a mouldering log and not as much sense as your ten-years-dead dog, when you look back in time, in your glass you shall see, the original willy was as innocent as can be. For his detachable hose it was such a joy; and fae a distance, t’was just like the Old Man of Hoy. But alas, alack, now life is a slog.

When your dog is chasing his tail round and round and round and having a grand old rumpus, and whenever people happen to be watching, there will always be at least the one imbecile who will make the following comment: “Isn’t he sweet! But, of course, he doesn’t really know it’s his tail, does he?” And you sigh, and roll your eyes and swallow your reply. For the thing is, you know exactly what would happen if he caught his five year old son whipping out his willy in Kensington Gardens – right under the statue of ‘Peter Pan’ – and was joyfully chasing it round and round a tree.

Applying similar criteria to his son to that which he applied to your dog (who in your opinion is a whole lot more intelligent), do you think for one moment that this same imbecile would say (with the approved, embarrassed, fatherly chuckle), “Isn’t he sweet? But, of course, he doesn’t really know it’s his willy, does he?”

No, I’m afraid he would not! And not only would he not, but his first reaction would be to smack his son’s hand, stuff the offending willy down his son’s trousers – possibly circumcising him in the zipper in the process – and drag him out of the park. And all the while pretending that it was all the boy’s mother’s fault (or that the boy had a learning disorder) and that he himself – as the father – was merely an innocent bystander. Needless to say, the minute they got home, he would immediately put his son across his knee, wash his mouth out with carbolic, and send him to his room without his tea. And then – ten years down the line – this man will wonder why his son has joined a terrorist cell.

Now, I know that in society children must learn to operate on a ‘higher’ plane from that of ‘lower’ animals, but for God’s sake don’t smack them in front of the statue of ‘Peter Pan’! The only thing that will accomplish (besides inspiring him to join a terrorist cell, of course) is to run away from home. In other words, after being sent to his room – and after drinking the glass of milk and eating the digestive biscuits his mother smuggled up to him the minute her husband had stormed out of the house and down to the pub – the son will manage to sneak his pet dog into his room. Together, the two of them will wait patiently for night to fall and for his parents to go to bed. Once everything is quiet, the little boy embarks upon the course of action he has earlier planned. Now, it’s not that he doesn’t love his parents; after all they did promise to buy him the latest X-Box for his birthday. However, his father did humiliate him in front of Peter Pan. And there are other certain mitigating circumstances, as well, and these alone demand precipitate action.

The first circumstance involves having his penis rubbed with noxious substances that make it not to wish come out and play. And while he hasn’t yet experienced this in person, his best friend has. And this best friend is currently filing suit against his parents and has moved in with his older sister and her husband. The second mitigating circumstance involves the sudden plan to have him sent to the Jar-Head Mercenary Boot Camp in the Mississippi Delta – an accredited K through12 academy that guarantees to turn your liberal faggot son into a brutal ironman assassin, no questions asked.

With these images spinning round his head, the little boy can think of only one way out. And so he fetches some of his mother’s talcum powder from the bathroom, sprinkles it over his and the dog’s head and calls it fairy-dust, after which he flies out the window to Never-Never-Land. And if you were still waiting for the first mention of a little wet spot, let’s just say you should have seen what his little willy did the moment he jumped.

Now let us proceed to the second scenario: You come home from an afternoon spent visiting the neighbours’ new litter of kittens. Your new puppy – who is usually so ‘good’ – is so excited to see you that he momentarily forgets his manners; a tiny sprinkle of yellow liquid splashes on your new white Nikes and leaves a wet spot on the parquet. However, since he is usually so fastidious and since you feel guilty for leaving him alone so long whilst eating your way through the neighbour’s daughter’s birthday cake, you clap your hands and laugh and clip the lead on to his collar and take him outside for a walk. Because, after all, he is only a little doggie, he is your precious love, and – let’s face – he’s not really very bright. And also, you are thrilled that he was so glad to see you that he actually burst his bladder. The ultimate compliment.

Now, let us substitute your aged, senile and foul-tempered mother for this sweet little puppy. Suppose you left her alone – under a similar set of circumstances – only you didn’t come home until after eleven that night. Let’s also suppose that, when the old bag hears your key in the front door, she struggles to her feet – knocks her Zimmer frame over on to your new glass-topped coffee table, smashing it to bits, and then totters into the hallway to tell you just what she thinks of you. Keeping in mind that she is not a cute little puppy (and is not nearly as bright), would you still think – even though her Tenas have overflowed, resulting not so much in a little wet spot as in a loch the size of Ness – that the old harridan is an adorable little cupcake? Or would you hold it against her that, even though you have been out partying and getting snockered while she has been sitting at home alone, she simply refuses to take the hint. In other words, in spite of all your prayers and your donations to the church’s restoration fund, the old termagant keeps right on living (and does it intentionally to spite you); because of this, and because she asked for it, you will probably resort to the sort of punitive action that doesn’t exactly thrill the social workers. And due to the fact that she will then yell at you and call you an ungrateful child and a changeling, you strap her down on to her bed. And when she has the gall to demand her bowl of gruel and inky black tea, you lie to her through your teeth and tell her she already had it. Because you know that even if you did go to all that trouble, she wouldn’t appreciate it any more than she would remember it.

Of course, once the old cow is safely in bed and her door is securely locked, you return to your lounge – the room you keep for ‘best’. After all, considering everything you’ve been through you deserve a drink and a good sit down in front of your seventy-two-inch flat screen television. It goes without saying that you’ve only recently refurbished this room. It has all-white carpet, white upholstered sofas and chairs, black and white stripped wallpaper with real paintings of clowns, and – naturally – a black marble wet bar.

However, the very first thing you notice upon entering this holy of holies (which she has been forbidden under pain of death to enter) is that she’s gone and smashed your new Waterford Crystal coffee table with her Zimmer frame. And the next thing you notice is that she has left a very large and very noisome wet spot right on the sofa cushions – a spot that has spread to include every inch of the sofa.

Clearly, there is only one sensible thing you can do: first thing in the morning – even before getting her dressed or spooning her ounce of gruel down her gullet – you take her straight over to that nursing home – the one on the bypass that accepts walk-ins. You leave her on the doorstep (or, if you prefer, in the middle of the street) and you don’t even bother to say goodbye – after all, what did she ever do for you except call you an ungrateful child and to wish she’d had the abortion her boyfriend had promised to pay for. And, it goes without saying the last thing you’ll do is leave a forwarding address or her medication. After all, even though this is ‘one of those’ nursing homes, there is still the matter of those telltale bruises and the broken arm and the fractured pelvis and the fact you haven’t changed her nappy for a good two months. It’s a case of “good-bye, mummy; don’t bother to wait up.”

But wouldn’t you have been saved all this bother if you hadn’t given her a home in the first place? That way you would have had the spare room – which would, of course, be absolutely perfect for that delightful little puppy you saw making a cute little wet spot in the pet shop window. And wasn’t he just soooo cute?

Having dispensed with the sort of large-scale wet-spot scenarios that we love to share round the barbie with our neighbours, let us get down to the ordinary, everyday, common or garden variety that are the bane of everyone’s existence.

And we shall start with underwear. Men’s underwear, to be precise. Now why on earth – unless you are endowed with one of those scrotums the size and weight of a bull elephant’s – should any man wish to wear underwear? After all, it pinches, it makes you sweat, and it invariably gets caught in your arse crack and leaves embarrassing skid marks (because God forbid you – being a real man – should actually wash).

Now, let’s face it, there may be two reasons for a man to wear knickers; however, only one of them is honest. The first one, which we shall dismiss out of hand as being unacceptable to any rugby player, is either because you are a male model – and therefore a faggot – or a premier league football player wearing it to please your sponsor. After all, you do have that new Bugatti Veyron and the penthouse in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to pay for. As well as your string of newly minted pop starlette WAGS. But, let’s face it, the minute the promotional photos are taken, the first thing you do is rip them off and go commando like the real working class lad he is.

That having been said – and believe me, although given the choice I will go commando any day of the week, there really is one good reason for a man to wear underwear: The wet spot. Now, let’s be perfectly blunt about this: when God created man, he included one really glaring flaw, for which – had man been a car – he would have been recalled.

The flaw is this: no matter how hard or vigorously a man shakes his penis after urinating, there is always that one drop that waits to emerge until after said penis is returned to the trousers. And the result is a wet spot that no man can conceal.

Now, it’s not as bad for an uncircumcised male, for he can always pull his foreskin over his penis and a tie a ribbon round it. However, if you are a real man and you are in a public convenience, and there are others around – especially that interested little specimen in the pink shirt and the champagne pompadour and the very large ex-fullback in the Security Guard’s uniform – the last thing you want to do is tie a ribbon round your willy in plain sight.

The only other problem with the ribbon solution in dealing with that pesky wet spot is that the interior of your foreskin is, at the best of times, a moist, unwashed, rancid and foetid receptacle for jism and other delights. Add the wet spot to the brew and it will waste no time in fermenting and starting to smell like the den of a male lion. And because of this, you might not ask your girlfriend to fellate you until after you’ve added a dash of cologne. Otherwise, your flavour will not be her flavour-of-the-month.

But, at least an uncircumcised man does have an option. However, for an uncircumcised man all is lost. You are out of luck. There is nothing you can do about that one extra drop of urine, which will spread and spread and spread, and it will be a particularly virulent shade of yellow. Especially if you are wearing white trousers and don’t have anything you can cover yourself with.

It goes without saying, the only solution is: underwear. Because, if push does come to shove and you are wearing underwear when your wet spot runs amok, you can always wait until things settle down and then remove the wet-spotted underwear and bin it. This does, of course, mean bringing sixteen or seventeen extra pairs whenever you leave the house, but wa-HAY, why do you think God created rucksacks?

Now, there is one piece of good news for male underwear sufferers, and that is that the new lycra boxers are really quite refreshing to wear. You can almost fool yourself into thinking that you’ve got nothing on at all. But then, men also believe that vegetables cause impotence.

But then, of course, if you are one of those slacker student types, your cargoes will already be so stained that a mere wet spot will be redundant. In fact, many students – particularly philosophy majors – can piss straight through their flies without interrupting their latest discussion in the cafe, and without exposing themselves to ridicule. Because, you see, nobody will notice anything different.

Having said all there is to say about underwear in its role as a man’s wet spot-concealer, let us segue to the role of the wet spot as the reason for the male’s unwillingness to sustain (and endure) long-term sexual relationships. Long-term meaning – in the excepted vernacular of the sexually active male human animal – anything longer than it takes for him to achieve his first organism. And let us brutal about this: it is not the fault of the man; he would be more than willing – if not to spend the entire night (in which case there’s always the danger that the woman might say, “I love you”) – but at least long enough to achieve a second orgasm (and with any luck, by that time the woman might have become desperate enough to resort to the tried and true method of clitorising herself while the man huffs and puffs and pumps and blows his wad up her tunnel – and always a split second after she has asked him not to come inside her). For to listen and to have sex at the same time means multitasking; something mean are not designed to do.

But now we come to the reason why men are so bad at long-term relationships. And quite simply, it is – once again – all the fault of the woman. For, no matter what, she makes a wet spot. And not only does she make a wet spot, but should the man remain even long enough for a second go – thus providing the woman with a heaven-sent opportunity to finally achieve an orgasm of her own – she will repay him by moaning that he is not taking his turn to lie upon the wet spot she made in the first place.

Now I ask you, is that fair? And do you blame a man for sneaking off at the first convenient moment (such as when she goes to the bathroom after their first go-round)? In my humble opinion if a woman wants to keep her man for any length of time, she will train herself never to leave a wet spot, and if she leaves one by mistake, never to suggest to a man that he might trade places with her. After all (and this is purely a physical reason), a man’s bottom is customarily hairier that that of a woman. The sort of fluids that make up this particularly annoying variety of wet spot, tend to stiffen the delicate hairs on the man’s posterior. These stiff, clotted hairs will, if left unattended – (as it no doubt will be, men not being particularly well-trained in the bottom-washing department) – lead to a rash. And a rash will lead to a certain unbearable itchiness, which – after it has been sufficiently scratched through the real man’s jeans – will develop boils.

I ask you this: Is a long term relationship worth getting boils for?

Now, we segue to the unlikely scenario that the man actually does enter in to a long term relationship which leads to marriage.

What this usually means is that a compromise has been struck. The man sleeps in his wife’s bed, but only long enough for her to make the wet spot. He then adjourns to his own bedroom – where he remains until such time as she has freshened up (because, after all, she is probably not smelling too good by this time) and changed the sheet. And when everything is once again bright and breezy, it is then the cue for the husband to re-enter the marital bed and start the whole thing over. And sometimes this procedure can be repeated as many as three or four times in a given night. Now, pity the poor man, for every time he has exhausted himself by pumping and huffing and puffing and blowing his wad, he then has to traipse all the way into the other room and take a nap whilst the woman repairs the damage that her latest wet spot has done to the bed. And then, as if that is not enough, the man is then obliged to get himself up from a sound sleep and return once again to his wife’s side. And it is about this time that she brings up the subject of love – and sometimes even babies – and the poor man is so tuckered out that all he wants to do is go down to the pub with his mates. After all, all the sheets are dirty, and he is certainly not going to lie on them until his wife stops pouting and gets up and launders them. And, irons them, of course, because in spite of their hairy bottoms, men are delicate creatures, prone to developing not only rashes and boils, but inconvenient chafing. And believe me, no man wants to take a shower in front of his mates at the squash club if he has any of these conditions. For you know full well that every single one of them will know that his wife has forced him to sleep on her wet spot, not having had either the compassion or the foresight to keep at least a dozen changes of sheets in the cupboard.

There are, of course, many, many, many other types of wet spots, and eventually I will get to them all. This may take time, as I value a scientific approach to life above all else. This means I shall have to experiment until I have personally researched each and every species and sub-species of wet spot, all their permutations. I shall learn all there is to know about their shapes and sizes and molecular densities, about their odours and flavours and even about their musical tastes. For believe me, the world of the seemingly insignificant wet spot is a glory to behold. And just so you know, I might even dedicate a whole chapter to the strange and mysterious medieval curse that condemned the feckless willy to an existence without so much as one single, perfect aim. It is truly a sad tale, but one that is worth the telling (besides which, it has only recently been declassified).

But for today, let us finish with a snippet of culture. To quote whoever it may have been: “some are puddles are large; some puddles are small; but throughout it all it was the good Lord who made them all.” And when the nights are cold and you are alone in your truckle bed, please remember that “even the tiniest wet spot is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

Another little ditty about a sweet and delicate friend, without whom none of us would be the same.

Please note that before the reader is permitted to partake of this tender salute to man’s best friend, and in order that his reading pleasure might be enhanced, he is obliged to read the following directions and to obey them to the letter.

Rule Number 1: The author’s instructions must be obeyed. This rousing anthem is extremely convoluted, as well as sublimely subtle. If the reader does not follow the author’s intent and pay full and undivided attention to the text, he is sure to get muddled. Warning: to not look for hidden meanings. You won’t find them, not even if you belong to one of those secret intelligence spy-ring cells.

Rule Number 1(a) – an explanation: You will note that the author explicitly said ‘he’. The author shall brook no criticism to the effect that he is guilty of harbouring gender bias; he may be a pig – and possibly vaginaphobic – but he is in no way sexist. He is, however, a sensitive soul, and he is all too aware that the subject matter may not be fully ‘appreciated’ by certain members of the gentler sex. But remember this: patience is a virtue, and all those who are judged to be among the fairest and daintiest under God’s heaven shall be, in the fullness of time, duly rewarded. For it is the sacred promise of this author that those delicate creatures, without whose wombs most dictators would not have been born, and without whose breasts they might have died within the first ten minutes, will be honoured by a spritely ode dedicated to the none other than the sacred pelvic floor. It goes without saying, this is a topic dear to every female heart, but one which is not only misunderstood by the lowly male, but which is almost totally incomprehensible. In other words, it falls into the well-known category to which so many mysteries are consigned by men, the “Wot da fuck is that when it’s at ‘ome?” category, along with asparagus, opera, making one’s own bed, doing the washing up, and remembering not to scratch himself at the breakfast table.

The fact of the matter is that a willy, as far as the more radicalised members of the female left are concerned, is given the same amount of respect that the entire entire female sex is accorded by the average Glasgow Rangers Football supporter. But since the average Glasgow Rangers fan mentions his willy at least ten times every ten seconds, whereas the average member of the female sex (let alone the members of the radicalised left) mentions her pelvic floor not at all, it is no wonder it has remained one of the greatest mysteries of all time. It only surprises me that some enterprising young composer of dissonant music has not made it into an opera for Glyndebourne. And why, for that matter, is there no Broadway musical? Andrew Lloyd-Webber, where are you when we need you?

Before proceeding, we are opening the floor to those who were so busy looking at the illustrations during their sex-education classes that they forgot to listen. No questions? Then obviously you have not understood a single word I’ve said. We shall continue regardless, and those of you in the back row who have not yet finished your breakfast, please leave now.

Rule Number 1 – a continuation: (The reader should note that the author has not erred, and that this is, in fact, not Rule Number 1B, but a continuation of the actual rule itself. And yes, there will be a test during the next period, so write everything down carefully).

As has been clearly stated in Rule Number 1, paragraph I, if the rule is not followed to the letter, the reader shall experience a certain amount of confusion and disorientation, leading to an irreversible malaise. Having established this, it should be understood that this anthem shall be sung lustily and at full volume and while the reader is marching proudly ‘round the room in a clockwise direction. Under no circumstances may he slouch upon a couch or under his duvet, and he is not permitted to skim through it as though it were just another selection gleaned from the poetry canon to fulfil his educational requirements and help him answer those two multiple-choice bonus questions at the end of his A-level theoretical physics exam. In other words, this is not one of those tedious poems written by tubercular and syphilis-riddled romantic poets. You may be able to get away with skimming some of Shakespeare’s little doodlings, or even with the meagre witterings of Keats or Shelley, but when you are celebrating something you hold so dear as your little willy, you must be more respectful. So, how should we approach this? First of all, stand up straight. Then take a deep breath, throw back your shoulders, suck in your gut, raise your head proudly, and beat your little drummer boy like a man. And if you have been eating a proper diet, and said your prayers every night before going to bed, and have never taken your clothes off without shouting “Glory be to God in the Highest!”, ol’ willy will rise like a rocket, not fall like a soufflé when someone opens the oven door prematurely.

Now, if you are teaching this at a state school, it might be advisable to compel the students to first study the following text before the actual reading is attempted. To do this, they must first sit at their desks, return their bacon butties and stilettos to their rucksacks, take out a highlighter – (and no, not to colour a moustache on the ginger dweeb sitting in the next desk). You then ask the pupils to read through the poem and mark any unfamiliar words. And please note: any pupils who mark every single word will be severely punished. In other words, they will be sentenced to a whole day eating nothing but Jamie Oliver’s healthy school meals.

Now once everyone has the basic idea down pat, then the teacher (you) lines them up along the west wall of the classroom. You set the tempo by cracking two heads together – a signal that every boy should extract his implement from its hiding place. Then, on the count of three – and setting off on the right foot – the marching will commence.

Now, in more advanced classes the room may be divided in half. The lads wearing the blue ribbons will march in a clockwise direction, and the lads in the pink ribbons, will skip daintily in the opposite – or anti-clockwise – direction.

Now please note, that in the case of the more advanced classes, there must be a dramatic pause before the last two verses. During this pause, the two halves will line up in the centre of the room, facing each other. At this point, the boys with the blue ribbons will be presented with long poles, and the other group – the boys in pink – shall be presented with sparkly fairy wands. There will then be a dramatic fanfare (composed – it goes without saying – by none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber and performed on the cello by his brother Julian). As this fanfare reaches its climax, a cannon shall be discharged, after which the final two verses shall be performed as a Morris Dance, with the boys in pink flitting about with their little wands, and the boys in blue clubbing the boys in pink with their poles. It goes without saying that the skipping and frolicking and clubbing must be done on the beat, and every single time the boys in pink are clubbed, the boys in blue will chant, “Fuck Fuck Fuck!” and the boys in pinks will squeal (in an eager falsetto tone), “Oo Oo Oo!”

Now, I do not anticipate that the boys from the state school will ever achieve this level of perfection, but as long as they can march round the room without the classroom disintegrating into bedlam and with only the accepted modicum of blood having been spilled, I shall be satisfied.

And remember: if you are not sophisticated enough to glide your tongue around the meter: force it (it’s the first step to understanding how poetry should be read). And if you are not sure of the meaning, try to remember last term’s lecture on ‘connotation’.

Are we ready? Then at the count of four, let us begin: “a one – a two – a three – a four:”

Doth willy ride a roller skate

And slide across the floor?

When his foreskin’s filled with chocolate

Do you love him all the more?

Doth your willy like to strut his stuff

Across the ballroom floors?

Do his danglies really shake and bake

When you bang them ‘tween the doors?

Doth willy stand up straight and tall,

Sing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing?’

When drooping does he hit the floor,

And ring out with a mighty ping?

When willy strokes your little dog,

Doth he pick up all his fleas?

Doth he hate to walk out in the fog

Or dance upon the freezing breeze?

Doth your willy get a headache

When he climbs into a tree?

Doth he taste like jam and crumpets

And smell of kedgeree?

Doth his inner tube go poking out

At the smallest thing?

And doth he always spit his wad

Du-ring the Highland fling?

Doth your willy ride a roller coaster

At the county fair?

Will it peer into the toaster

Upon a punter’s dare?

Doth willy ever read a book

On summer afternoons?

Or doth he sit and watch the box

Or play upon the runes.

Doth willy hide out from the chef

When the water it doth boil?

And doth he not like steamy baths

When all wrapped up in foil?

Doth willy pack his bags and flee,

When greeted by a moil?

And doth he sail across the sea

Or trench into the soil?

Doth willy rub in olive oil

Upon his tender head?

When blisters start to bleed and roil

And scorch it purple red?

Doth willy take a holiday

When rubbed raw by your hand?

And do you give him ginger beer

And affix a rubber band?

When willy doth crave company

Do you treat him very nice?

Or do you shove him in all dry,

And smack him once or twice?

When willy goes into your barn

To ride upon a horse,

And when you try to jump a fence,

Do you dump him in the gorse?

Doth willy argue with your guys

When they do belly ache,

And do they snigger at its size

And say he was a wee mistake?

When willy he doth take a bath

Upon a morn so cold,

Then doth your wife say ‘ain’t he cute,’

A’hidin’in his fold?”

Is willy very camera shy

And hates to take his pic,

Do you snap it anyway

And below it write: ‘this is my dick?’

If that is what you do, my friend

Then please remember this,

Willy’s the only friend you’ve got

So do not take the piss.

If he decides to go on strike,

There’s nothing you can do.

No surgery or bright blue pills

Will fix the damage you did do?

So treat your little willy nice,

And moisturize his skin

And powder him all up so nice,

And make his facie grin.

Then he will serve you all your days,

And make you very proud.

Through all your good and sundry lays,

You’ll thank him oh, so loud.

For he hath been through thick and thin,

A faithful happy chap,

So do not push your luck, my friend,

And land him with the clap.

And if you shove him up a whore

After a drunken brawl,

Please don’t forget to wrap him up

Inside a latex shawl.

So, drink to little willy, please,

He is your one true friend.

He knows your moods inside and out,

And will your spirits mend.

Oh, willy dear, when I do die,

I’ll stuff you full of straw,

And hang you up upon the wall

Above the gun rack in the hall.

And when St. Peter wants to know,

Why was it left behind?

You’ll say it’s time it had some fun….

All on its own, without a thuggish man to mind.

This little song is at its end

There isn’t any more.

The same is true about you, my friends, …

Please leave, and shut the door.

A Note for Headmasters and teachers: Should this exercise prove successful, may I suggest it should be presented by the whole school during Sports Day? And don’t be too concerned about the parents’ reactions: those who do not understand it will be too embarrassed to ask, and who do understand will be too embarrassed to say anything at all. But, in any case, I shouldn’t worry too much about that. Anyone who’s ever heard a group rendition of anything at a school assembly will know that, not only will none of the pupils remember many of the words, but the words that are remembered will be completely mangled, and therefore, unintelligible.

More About Me – and About Bonkers Egypt – Than You Thought You Needed To Know.

Does your willy need a bonnet

When he goes into the sun?

Do you rub some ointment on it?

Or put it in a bun?

Does your willy put his collar up

In the cold and damp?

Do you mail it to the warmer climes,

And send it with a stamp?

I want you to know the only reason I am writing this is to offend my one remaining friend (yes, that’s what I’m like). You see, she’s a woman, and as you all know, women don’t necessarily like talking about the same things that men do. Women seem to be very delicate creatures, and very prone to attacks of nausea should certain topics crop up in a conversation. This was brought home to me the other day when I was munching double roasted burnt chicken at one of the many eateries on Bitosh – which is by way of being the ‘South Beach’ of Alexandria, Egypt, where I’m currently hanging my hat (and no, not the kind of hat women don’t like me to talk about). The woman I was with…

But first, let us clarify a few things. When I tell you I was actually sharing a meal with a woman in a public, I should emphasize that in Egypt, it is not often that a male will actually been seen in public with a woman of the opposite sex. And as for eating food with her? Don’t be obscene. After all, unless she’s your mother and completely veiled, the sight of her opening her mouth and inserting something even as innocent as a bread roll into its depths, will probably inflame you. Is that clear? No? Then we shall discuss it a little more before coming to grips with today’s topic, i.e. foreskins.

Now, I like woman. Not necessarily as sexual partners, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s say, I tend to prefer them to men as companions. And I have an unusually large number of female Egyptian friends, but not more than one or two males (for reasons I may or may not address in the future). Now this is sort of rare. It makes me one of the few men I know in Alexandria who’s ever been seen in a cafe with a woman. But, here you must bear with me a little longer – for women such as the one with whom I openly consorted in such a blatantly public venue as a burnt barbeque chicken eatery on Bitosh, are obviously ‘bad girls’. Now, there two principal types of bad girls. If you are an Egyptian bad girl, you will never ever be able to get married, and – what is more – the mere sight of your wantonness, makes older men (the ones with beards and bruises on their foreheads) look for the nearest pile of stones. Then there are the foreign bad girls. Now, in the case of these abominations, they are already so bad that the only thing they crave is to give desperate Egyptian males their first (and possibly last) fuck of their lives. In other words, foreign girls should count themselves lucky to get a nice dry Egyptian fuck from a nice steroid-filled Egyptian fucker, after which they will be begging to convert to Islam, marry the fucker, help him immigrate to America (or possible to Ireland, or Canada or Sweden, or to one of those other places with free healthcare). And then as neo-Egyptian wives, they will spend the rest of their life scrubbing the floors of their mother-in-law’s apartment, doing the washing, and hanging the carpets from the balcony. And, oh yes, if they want some wifely excitement, they get to lower a little basket from their window and ask their husband’s brother if he will go and buy some food for them. They then beat the carpets for another twenty minutes, or until the brother-in-law returns with the requested items, at which point he dumps everything into the basket, and the wife gets to exercise her muscles by hauling the entire load up to her apartment (on the seventeen floor) by hand. Now, if the foreign bad girl will not consent to marry and convert and cover herself with a blanket, there’s always the possibility that – although in Egyptian terms she is already a slut – the male might consent to marry her via one of those friendly little arrangements called a weekend marriage. Now in a weekend marriage, the bad girl agrees to become a good girl, but only just for the weekend (hence the name a weekend marriage). In other words, it is a legal arrangement lasting just long enough so that the good Egyptian male can finally feel the difference between a vagina and a little boy’s anus. Then, after the weekend is over, the newly-proclaimed good girl is divorced (for not having had a hymen when she got married), and she abruptly reverts to being a bad girl again. And, it goes without saying, that being a born-again bad girl puts her in a whole new category. Not only is she a defiled bad girl, but she is a despised and outcast divorced and defiled bad girl. And it’s even more special if she is a despised and outcast and defiled foreign bad girl, for this makes her a double-strength, double-dip bad girl who was such a bad girl to begin with that she deserves everything that’s coming to her, but we won’t get in to that. Let us just say that, as a double-strength, double-dip foreign bad girl she does have a certain allure. Not only that, but it’s probable that she will also have an abundance of pubic hair. For an Egyptian male, this opens up a whole, new, uncharted territory. For you see, the removal of every hair on a woman’s body with hot sugar is another exciting Egyptian preoccupation, and one that occupies a good twelve hours of every good girl’s day – in other words, the hours when she is not scrubbing the floors of her mother-in-law’s apartment, washing clothes or beating the carpets. This, of course, means that this activity is really a blessing, for without it a good girl might have time to go shopping for shoes – which is always the first step down the slippery slope. And from there it’s almost inevitable that the good girl will go bad.

Now, let us be sensible here. It goes without saying that, with all this special allure going for them, these double-strength, double-dip foreign bad girls can now be handed round to all the ex-weekend husband’s friends, and possibly also to most of the other men in the local cafes. After which, of course, they should be stoned, but that’s all right; foreign bad girls can always escape that fate by giving private lessons teaching English, for this gives them a certain legitimacy when they renew their visa. But if they are not enamoured of teaching English to the entire law faculty of the university or to the entire shipyard in Wardienne, they should really put on their thinking caps. In other words, before they declare their independence, they should think seriously about their options: is it better to be stoned by a crowd of men wearing Armani jeans under their galabayas, or is preferable to spend one’s life scrubbing the floors of one’s mother-in-law’s apartment, washing the clothes, and beating the carpets? It’s what we call a win-win situation, which is why we have all these young western girls flooding into the land of the Pharaohs to teach English. Figure that one out if you will.

Anyway, to get back to the subject of women’s delicate natures, I was (yes!) sharing a slab of burnt double barbeque chicken with this double-strength, double-dip bad foreign women (she’s only been here a week, and she’s already on the fast track to seriously bad-girldom). She was bemoaning the troubles she was having in adjusting to the cultural quagmire of being a western female in Egypt. In other words, she was still making eye-contact with people on the street, for which she has already lost her reputation in Agami. Now, I have been here for some time, and let us say that, although I am a man and therefore operate on a much higher plain in Egyptian society, I’ve been around the block a few times. And, in a general sense, I know more or less what not to do, at least when it comes to the ‘big’ issues. This means, of course, I am aware of certain cultural pit falls you do not hear about in the travel guides, etc. It also means I know almost everything there is to know about the good boy/bad boy/good girl/bad psycho-drama merry-go-round, which is a whole new other chapter. Anyway, after listening to this double-strength, double-dip foreign bad girl for an hour or so, and commiserating – because, let’s face it; nothing you’ve ever been taught in the US on any subject whatsoever applies here. But, of course, it goes without saying that westerners will insist upon bring their beloved values with them, trying to force them down the throats of the poor downtrodden natives, and then being miserable because they simply cannot cope, and because they don’t realise that the Egyptians (bless their little hearts) think all westerners are stupid fucking morons and there for the taking.

Now, after we had dealt with how she should simply dump everything she had ever learned out the window (and for fuck’s sake, next time put some clothes on before you come out: you’re not in Wisconsin anymore), the conversation drifted on to other, more light-hearted topics. One of these concerned the wonderful bidet attachments fitted into every Egyptian toilet. Now, in Egypt – as in many, many other Middle Eastern and Asian countries – toilet paper is considered unclean. Meaning it just smears everything around. Instead the locals are accustomed to washing themselves. Now, this is a very efficient methodology and it’s certainly very sanitary. Plus the fact that it makes sense. And, also, it does prolong the life of drains. Anyway, I asked this woman – in all seriousness – how she was adapting to this, and she immediately squinched up her face, squealed “Eeeeouuuuu,” which was followed by a, “Oh don’tttttt,” like a six-year-old girl. And I thought to myself, you are a fucking forty-one year old woman, you’ve had a child and you come from a country that bombs the shit out of every nation that isn’t their flavour of the month, and yet you cannot handle a serious question regarding the disposal of bodily wastes and how you clean yourself afterwards. But, of course, I should have remembered that the country from which she came is also the only country in the world where they can’t even say the world ‘toilet’. And this means that three of their major contributions to the rest of the planet – in addition to ‘Farmville’ and ‘Facebook’ – are ‘comfort station’, ‘little girls’ room’ and ‘tinkle’.

Now, here I must apologise for dragging you along to Bonkers Egypt when all you were interested in was hearing my views about the conditions inflicted upon the wangers of the world. Please forgive me!

If you will remember, I did start this chapter by giving you a sweet little poem. To understand me, you must realise that the pro-/anti- foreskin debate has resonated within me since the very first time I saw a penis that was (shall we say) differently enabled. At the time, I remember thinking, how very strange! How wonder what it feels like? And, of course, I wondered if it tasted the same, and if its owner would let me sample it…

Now, let me be blunt (it’s amazing how many times I can be blunt in these blogs, isn’t it). I do love penises more than practically anything else in the world. Except perhaps horses. A nice friendly penis – clean, of course – is far more sublime than any Mozart Sonata. It beats the hell out of kicking a football around a pitch, and I would certain rather nibble on a happy wanger than I would on a bar of chocolate. And as for pop singers, all I can say is, “Shut the fuck up and show me the willy!” Quite, simply, willies are delightful creatures, they are the miracles of the universe, they sing like heavenly choirs of angels (and if you’ve never heard them, that means you’re tone deaf). And it beats me how any intelligent man with a willy between his legs and reasonable health, would rather waste time in making a living or in ruling the world, when he could instead be sitting at home with a nice cup of coffee and perhaps a kipper, and discussing the meaning of life with his willy.

I have spent a considerable amount of time researching the crimes perpetuated on innocent willies in the name of religion. And what I have found is that it is a very painful subject.

Now, I refuse to be drawn into the more arcane traditions with which so many cultures are enamoured. The whole business of having your penis mangled simply to prove your manhood seem to me to be somewhat of an oxymoron. Or, in other words, completely moronic. I mean, isn’t the whole idea of having a male organ to impregnate a woman and, thus, propagate the human race? You know? Go forth and multiply? Well, how can you fucking do that if you’ve mangled your willy so badly that it doesn’t really function again. At least, not without the killing of a lot of small, endangered animals and seahorses and grey whales. Or even without inhaling little triangular tablets that turn your vision blue and give you a headache.

Yes, I know – the minute I mention circumcision, I am going to be bombarded with all five hundred fifty-six million, one hundred fifty thousand, three hundred twenty-five entries in Google, all of which set out in pedantic terms that the uncircumcised penis is both an abomination, and behind every plague and every misfortune ever to befall man. But, what you must understand is that every single one of these entries was written by an American. Probably a member of the elite CIA/FBI propaganda unit. Now, if the Americans want to be pro-circumcision, that’s up to them. But why must they always try to justify their own peccadilloes by pretending they have the last word? I mean, they yell very loudly about being ‘God’s own country’. But if this is the case, and if – as they like to proclaim – we are made in God’s image, why is it they cannot grasp that man was created with a foreskin? It’s such a handy little wrapper, and if they are so worried about it being unclean, why in the fuck don’t they simply learn to clean it. You know: you retract it; you wash inside the foreskin with a gentle soap, and you wash the glans, and then wash the rest of your little willy, and then you bathe your little, wrinkly scrotum… and then you make sure you rinse it all very thoroughly with water. And you always check it for any spiders nesting underneath the foreskin, and also check that there are no mousies having babies in the furry patch under your scrotum and between your legs. And then you dry everything using a soft towel or by standing naked behind the engines of a jumbo jet, or simply by having your significant other blow on it. After it’s squeaky clean and to ready to start its own little willy day (for it is bound to lead a busy life, and its Blackberry is full to the brim), you moisturise it and powder it and gel its curly locks. However – and this is important: whatever you do, please make sure your willy is nice and dry before you stuff it back into the underwear you haven’t washed since you graduated from high school and left home in 1956.

And herein lies the crux of the matter. Not only do the Americans not openly teach about the proper washing of man’s most essential tool, they would rather blame its natural state for the ills of the world (including weapons of mass destruction and every single pandemic and epidemic) than they would in instructing their own citizens in proper sanitary practises – which is sort of in keeping with their insistence on smearing their shit around their bottoms and clogging their drains with toilet paper. A very odd place, is God’s Own Country.

Now – never fear – as long as I have a willy, I will have a lot more to say on this subject. But until I do, please remember to treat it nicely and try not to torture it. Do not stick it through the meat grinder during one of your sexual escapades, and do not insert it into a fucking light socket. That has been done before, and what always happens it that you will be found by the police; they will take a lot of photographic images, and these photographic images will be splashed all over the local paper, and then, of course, they will be posted on your sister’s Facebook page. Most likely, she will be forced to commit suicide, and it will go and on and on… until her entire cheerleading squad is kicked out of their Sororities and forced to marry insurance salesmen, wear shapeless polyester blend sweatpants and Crocs, and shop for their two dozen children at Factory-2-U.

And all because you tortured your little willy!

And in case you were wondering about the poem – no, it’s not finished. But don’t worry your silly willy’s head that; it shall be.

What a certain colt told me about a certain race, and why you’ll never see a stallion or a mare posing for Playcolt or Playfilly:

Have you ever seen your horse naked? I don’t mean with their manes hogged… although come to think of it, I have seen a horse with a hog on its back. It was not a perfect exercise in compromise, for although the hog was perfectly content to straddle the horse like Edward VII and simply bounce up and down, the horse ended up in the hospital, where the doctors insisted he wear one of those back-braces. You know the ones I’m talking about: all the warehousemen in Asda wear them. They are those humiliating black, harness-like contraptions that make even the most inflated of steroid inhalers look like a greeter at a Star Trek convention. But to get back to my question: have you ever seen a horse naked? I have and believe me they are just as spectacular without the flesh as they are when they are wearing it. And if it were up to man, there would be no end of equine nudist paddocks and naked pony support groups and internet horse porn sites and X-rated Point-to-Pointer dating services. However, when it comes right down to it, horses do not want these things; they know how irredeemably sleazy we are. In other words, they take it for granted that humans will exploit anything and anyone, especially if there is money or notoriety involved. And if we can find a way to indulge in a little pay-per-view inter-species sex at the same time, so much the better. Horses, on the other hand, are very private creatures, and are possessed of a strong moral code and a sense of family. Horses are patient and willing to compromise. They are also, on the whole, extremely intelligent, as well as realistic, which means that even the no-hopers that have trouble finishing fifteenth in a field of two, still possess a certain self-awareness and dignity, as well as a greater sense of perspective than that exhibited by their owners (after all, it is only a race, and the horse is more interested in chatting up that new filly back at the yard). And they also have a sense of what is right. Take St. Nicholas Abbey, for instance. Now, for months and months, the commentators and bookies have been salivating over this colt, rubbing their hands in premature glee over the money he’s going to make for them. However, he is a very wise and self-possessed young colt, and don’t forget he comes from a good family and has been to a good school. He’s also had to work very hard, but because of his family connections he knows that one day, he’ll get all the prettiest girls. But, as I have intimated, he is a deep thinker. He’s talked to his older and more illustrious neighbours, and he’s texted back and forth with such celebrities as Kauto Star and Denman. He has also communicated (via automatic writing) with the likes of George Washington, Horacio Nelson and Shergar. And along the way, he came to certain conclusions. The most obvious was that celebrity is not all that it is cracked up to be, and that the only reason you are constantly on page three of The Sun is that you are going to make a lot of punters rich. You have never met any of these punters yourself and, furthermore, you are becoming increasingly aware that almost all of them would confuse you with a candidate for the knackers’ yard if they saw you hanging out at the pony races and keeping company with a hard-drinking harness horse. Because, you see, they‘ve never really looked at you as you. Without your colours and pet jockey and glamorous trainer, you are nothing – like Katie Price when she takes off her boobs and goes to Home Depot in a Jaeger twin-set and a funny-looking bald man wearing Bermuda shorts and a string vest. Now, after months and months of being the bee’s knees, all the hype starts to wear on you. It’s all very well, you say, looking ahead to a life of rumpy-pumpy with the richest and prettiest of the hotties. But in the back of your mind is that certain niggling “what if…? what if…?” St. Nicholas Abbey suddenly thought of Horacio Nelson and certain other ill-fated young colts who, for all intents and purposes, had had the world as their oyster. But just as they had been entering the home straight of the fame and fortune stakes, their bodies had broken down or they had tripped on a punter’s cigar or they lost had their concentration when a massively endowed bimbo from Beachy Head hung her tits over the rail and simpered, “Go get’em big fella.” Young St. Nicholas tried to put himself in the place of Horacio Nelson. I mean, could he really blame him? In his place – being a red-blooded male himself – if he had to decide between winning the Epsom Derby and making a home with Katie Price – where all he would have to do is play a few chukkas of polo now and then in front of the cameras and perhaps teach her the finer points of dressage and how to make a flying leap wearing a mini-skirt – which would he really prefer? I mean, being a good-looking, dapper lad, he could always pull the chicks wherever he went, so that wasn’t an issue. But, then, of course, alas for young Horacio, he had been so transfixed by that bimbo’s décolletage, that in the middle of the Derby his mind forgot what his legs were supposed to be doing, and he fell apart… And the rest, as they say, is history So anyway, while St. Nicholas Abbey’s was mulling over Horacio Nelson’s story from beyond the grave, who should interrupt but George Washington. This, of course, should come as no surprise, seeing as how he had never been known for his modesty when it came to expressing his opinion. Now, young George had a very different story to tell. Shall we say a different slant on things. A much more edgy type of cautionary tale. Unlike Horacio Nelson, George had always ignored the blatant, waggling distractions offered by female temptresses of various species. It goes without saying that he occasionally got carried away with his own magnificence and in gazing at his feral muscularity as it flashed by on the many wide-screen televisions positioned from one end of the track to the other. And yes, sometimes his very perfection caused in him to forget that he was only there to make the punters happy and to make his owners richer than they already were. However (thanks to his trainer’s counselling sessions) he did remember to win a sufficient number of classics to guarantee him a long, happy, healthy, and overcrowded sex life with the best mares from around the world. Except, of course, from Dubai, but that didn’t bother him, because he was never overly attracted to fillies wearing veils. But then young George retired. He was, of course, very wealthy by now, and he wasted no time in relocating to the Monte Carlo of the thoroughbred world, where he was placed in the hands of makeover experts. Glossy extensions were woven into his mane – for in spite of his magnificence, the young hunk was showing signs of male pattern baldness. His muscles were toned, and he was groomed to gleaming perfection, his penis was polished, and he was prescribed with courses of vitamins and maximum-strength Viagra. He was also given elocution lessons, for in spite of his good background and excellent schooling, young George had taken to speaking in the guttural and incomprehensible accents of the Tipperary traveller ponies with whom he routinely went out binge-drinking and set-dancing on Saturday nights. It was during his elocution lessons, given of course, by Clare Balding, that George started to re-examine his priorities. Did he really want to be the big man about town? Now, Ms. Balding is a very intelligent and perceptive young woman, and she herself had been going through certain realignments in her own life. She was aware of emotional conflicts and sexual uncertainties. Therefore, she couldn’t help but notice that young George was going through a similar set of crises. Being the positive sort of person she is, she confronted him and offered to help. And while what the young colt told her didn’t come as a complete surprise, it did knock her back on her heals a bit. For George had broken down and confessed that all he really wanted in his life was to run away and share a small hill farm with… Yeats. “Yeats?” she gasped, breaking out in a sweat and swooning from the images that flashed through her mind. “Yeats!” roared George Washington, his voice vibrating with ecstasy, “He is the man I love! “But isn’t he…? stammered Ms. Balding. “Yes!” cried George. “He may be a big brute of a man and he may look like a rugby player, but I’ll make him love me!” And then he cried out in great, shuddering sobs and threw himself on to the ground in despair. “But he doesn’t want me. All he thinks about is Zarkava and Ouija Board!” Here the colt bolted and bashed his head against a tree. And then he whispered, as though his heart were braking, “He is an unfaithful bigamist and a bully, that’s what he is! And I hate him!” Anyway, to cut a long story short, young George threw his Viagra out the window, along with all his vitamins, and we all know what happened after that. He couldn’t do it with the girls, and when he did, all he fired was blanks. And he couldn’t get the man he loved. And so it went. One tragedy followed another, and the telling of it left young St. Nicholas Abbey in a pool of tears. It goes without saying that at this point, Shergar chimed in with a few suggestions of his own, such as how to disappear in the dead of night. However, St. Nicholas Abbey wasn’t altogether certain he wanted to end his days working with The Bearded Lady in a Bulgarian Circus, so he thanked Shergar and told him that, if he really wanted to do something positive, he might ring up and explain himself to The Aga Khan. He then paid off the automatic-writing lady (hired for the afternoon from the pony racing circuit) and settled down to think. In the end, of course, St. Nicholas Abbey realised that what he really needed was a short respite from the media glare. And the only way he could do that was simply not to win. And so he didn’t. And while he knew he would be in deep doodoo if he did a Twist Magic and sat down at the off, he took a leaf from the lives of Kauto Star and Denman and so many others, and in the process showed them he was not a machine and did not have to sell his soul for the sake of a few pieces of silver. After all, there was always another race. Now, in order to explain how he actually came to his decision we must go back to the issue of horses and nakedness. Exactly one week before the Guineas, a certain representative of a certain media empire sidled up to St. Nicholas Abbey’s paddock when he was basking in the hot Irish sun and enjoying a few quiet moments of solitude. The colt had finished his workout, Aiden had had his little chat with him, Johnny had given him an extra treat, and the colt was in a good frame of mind. And that being so, he decided that – since no one was around and he was a lifelong naturist – he would quietly slip out of his clothes and soak up a few rays. It was then he heard a twig snap. He turned his head and saw – not only a single paparazzo – but a whole camera crew from one of the gutter satellite channels. And that was when St. Nicholas Abbey decided to the only thing to do was to throw the race. For if he won, the image of him – naked as a jaybird and playing volleyball with one of the barn cats – would be flashed around the world. But, on the other hand, if he lost, he would be yesterday’s news. And so, then and there and without telling anyone, he made his decision. But why is it that we humans, who certainly win no beauty prizes when we disrobe, have never ever seen a horse in the altogether? Is it that they are ashamed? It is that they actually look like boiled chickens when their coats are off being cleaned? Or is it that they simply don’t trust us? Horses have been studying people for a good many centuries, and certain episodes are bound to have left a bad taste in their mouths. As I said before, horses are intelligent; they are sensitive. And they are also pragmatists. Long ago they reasoned that perhaps it was better to humour us than it was to end up like just so many faceless farm animals, namely pigs and sheep and cows. But always at the back every horse’s racial memory there are certain historical episodes that illustrated man’s inhumanity to the horse. And I am not talking about the eating of equine flesh in French restaurants, or bull-fights or the genocide of the abattoirs, or even the mass slaughter on the myriad killing fields of war – for horses fully understand the basic cruelty of the human species, and are simply biding their until we finally finish each other off. What I am referring to now can be summed up in two names: Caligula and Catherine the Great. No! No self-respect horse will ever disrobe in front of a human being. It is not as though they look like boiled chickens – for they most certainly do not – they simply know what we are like. And if you don’t know what we are like, why don’t you close down your computer, go out to the barn, and ask the ewe with the red ribbon tied round her neck to remind you what you did to her last night. Does that answer your question?

Did you know I used to be a nice person? I bet you didn’t, did you? In fact, I bet you didn’t even give it a single thought! Not only that, but I’ll wager you a bucket of your bottom cellulite that up until this very moment, you didn’t even give a fuck. I could have been the type of sociopathic hoodlum who beat small dogs and rogered your pet cockerel. But did you care? No! And that, my dear friend, is not nice of you. And if you are not nice to me, explain to me why I should be nice to you? In fact, why should I be nice to anyone? Seriously! I mean, why should I? What have they done for me that I should be nice to them? Knowing them, they are probably lurking in the background of some celebrity’s four thousand nine-hundred eighty-six Facebook friends, and are feeling cocky because, at long last, they have made it to the ‘Big Time’.

Now, notice please, we are now going to make our first little detour, after which we shall return to the subject of my niceness.

Exactly three days ago (I remember it as if it was only the day before yesterday), I dumped my old Facebook page, and in the process I killed off exactly three thousand, six-hundred, five of my nearest and dearest friends, consigning them to a slow and agonizing death-by-disillusionment in the depths of the Facebook Cauldron of Hell and Insignificance, an inferno so vapid that not only are all the computers on dial-up party lines, but there are no laptops or Blackberries or iPods or iPads (do you know fucking annoying it is to type iPod and iPad?). Try it a hundred times and get back to me. iPod, iPad, iPod, iPad… does that mean we can expect an iPud in the future, followed closely by an iPed? What bliss it will be!

Imagine this, if you will. A universe full of iPuds! Now, as you know, an iPud will be the Next Big Thing in fast food for our busy lifestyles. Cyber puddings! Think of all the time they’ll save! No more wasting a moment of your 24/7 life actually eating. You can now be texting your friends, overthrowing third-world countries, and having Kraft Foods taking over all the French 3-star Michelin restaurants and turning them into CheezWiz franchises. All while downloading images of Spotted Dick and Sticky Toffee on to your iPud! And all for only the cost of the average, used Pagani Zonda. And then the following year, of course, we shall have foisted upon us the ultimate in social preventative nannyism: the iPed, which every male whose balls have dropped will be required to carry on his person at all times. It will sound an alarm and initiate punitive preventative strikes against his person, whenever he gets within a mile of a school, or within three miles of any house with children living in it. Including his own. It will work like this: for the first offence: the removal of one bollock; for the second offence, the removal of the second bullock; for the third offence, the removal of the first bullock of the suspicious-looking blond man with the fake tan and the comb-over – you know the one: the poor blighter who just happened to be reclining sur la plage in Beachy Head, eating an ice cream cornet and studying an old copy of Health and Fitness. The iPed will, of course, have a 100% success rate, in that after only a week and a half, Britain will be a nation of castrati. I’m not sure how the Scots will figure into this scheme, simply because a life spent in exposing your ginger, hairy scrotum to the north Atlantic gales and toughening your bollocks with Skull Splitter, will have rendered them impervious. Which means, of course, that all the remaining males in the United Kingdom will be Scottish (wa-HAY). Scotland will then regain its rightful place as the fatherland. It shall proclaim itself Scotland the Big End of Britain, and England will be relegated to the position of That Little Country South of Scotland and East of Wales. And all because of Steve Jobs. I think that merits an honorary knighthood at the very least.

And, of course, the whole i-thing will go on and on, until eventually Sir Steve (but, of course, he won’t really be called Sir Steve, being an illegal alien and all that) will enter into his own dotage. It will be at this point that he will come out with his masterpiece: the waterproof iPid (in seventeen decorator colours, all in shades of yellow). The waterproof iPid will be a handy-dandy little device that self-activates whenever an incontinent person empties his or her bladder. For this particular gem, the possibilities are endless, but I personally think the most positive contribution it will make to society will be to electrocute each and every subscriber the first time he or she urinates on your new leather sofa. Personally, I don’t know what the world would do without Steve Job.

But where was I? Oh, yes, I was bemoaning the fate of all those Facebook friends I had consigned to eternal rejection, damnation and despair. On one hand, I feel their pain, because they will no longer be able to send me free gifts of chocolate, and kisses, or Free Visits from the Tena Lady. And nor will they be able to submit their heartfelt requests that, in lieu of my sending them boxes of JumboGasoMart’s best-selling white port, cases of precooked InstaFlab Frozen Pizzas (each with a tonne of extra cheese) and cases of Velveeta Donuts for their birthday, I should support their cause. Which is invariably to help sponsor free breeding herds of swine, as well as low-cost female circumcisions for every Jewish and Muslim family in the Middle East. Not to mention Detroit and Bradford and St Loo and Welwyn Garden City and the suburb of Golders Green Crematorium. On the other hand – and this is to my credit and must therefore raise my niceness quotient by at least one point – when I closed my Facebook account, I did actually save two people. But it was a matter of sentimentality, I guess, for I had been having honest-to-goodness social intercourse with both of them (and privately – not by plastering my innermost thoughts on their walls), so I suppose it wasn’t so much niceness on my part as it was fear. For if I dumped these two rather disreputable lowlifes along with the rest of the great unwashed, I would be left completely friendless – both in Facebook and in real life. And so I caved in to my fears. And now, fuck it with a garden implement, not only did I rescue them from a fate worse than death, but I even invited them both to join my new page. And they fucking well did! And this means I am now I’m stuck with them. Forever! I can see it in my crystal ball: these two refugees from Noddyland will start recommending all their friends, and their friends will recommend all their friends, and before you know it, all my former, discarded and loser friends will find their way back to me. At which point I shall be forced dump them again, and then yet another endless cycle of misery will be set into motion. And that will go on for the rest of my life. And even unto the third generation.

However, know this! I am being crafty and evil-minded this time round: on my new page, only those involved in national hunt races or rare breed insemination of pigs or fans of Sodom-maniacal-psychopathic-sociopathic-monosexual stand-up comedy or unicycle-restoration will be approved. And don’t fucking think you can pretend you are one of these things if you are not, because don’t forget, I have been around this block before. And I have ways of finding out who you are.

And now that we have finished our little detour (you know I always find my way back in the end) let us return to the subject at hand. Support Groups.

Now, I suppose support group have their place, but why are they always attended by the same small clusters of people? It’s like an exclusive club. Now I admit that my experience is limited, confined as it is to the ‘Schizophrenics-R-Us’ group, the ‘Pit Bull Terriers Under Sentence of Death’ group, the ‘Reality Television Multiple Personality-Enabled Performers’ group, and, it goes without saying, the ‘People Who Never Do Anything Useful But Tell Each Other What To Do’ group. And it doesn’t take a great deal of intelligence to figure out that all of the members of my groups could actually belong to as many groups as they have split-personalities. The world simply is not big enough.

Yes, I know we all need a bit of help, and we can’t all be on the Oprah Winfrey Show every week like Tom Cruise, but it would be nice now and then to belong to groups which attract a different clique of people. A fresh clique. A new clique A clique for people who have never before had their own clique – people such as falling down drunks, or drug fiends, or serial bigamists, or morbidly obese people who marry donuts.

It is, of course, inevitable that among our multiple personality groupies, there are a certain number of sexual addicts. In fact, at least twenty of my fellow support-groupers have – collectively – a minimum of five thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five sexually addictive personalities. Imagine, if you will, what the meetings are like. A newcomer will stand up – a bustier version of Katie Price – and announce in her best Essex accent that her name is “The Duchess of Essex” and that she is a sexual addict. Whereupon she will grab herself by the scruff of the neck, push herself roughly out the window, and squeal (in the accents of the Cardiff versions of Ant and Dec), “NO! I am a sexual addict!” And then a third personality – someone looking suspiciously like an Argentine version of Peter Andre, will join the fray (but only for a season and a half). And from there, it will go on until every single contestant from the last twenty-five years of “I’m a Celebrity…” has stood up and taken their proverbial ‘place in the sun’ (I’m sorry, that was another support group, one devoted to rejected overseas holiday homes).

But back to the multiple personality group. After two months of sitting on the sidelines, the penny finally dropped. Every single person who has ever appeared on “I’m a Celebrity…” is the same person! Just think! The producers are geniuses! They managed to track down the one person with so many multiple personalities that they could solve all their casting problems for the rest of century (don’t tell anyone, but I have a sneaky feeling it is John McKittrick)!

But back to the meeting. After an eternity of bickering and eating pig’s penises and bathing in whale semen, the sessions looked like they might actually be drawing to a close, which only goes to show how stupid it is to succumb to optimism. For no sooner did I conclude that everyone had finally had solved their personality conflicts and that perhaps I might be able to remind them that this was actually the “Gardener’s World” support group, the fucking “Strictly Come Dancing” multiple personalities, which were actually the adjunct personalities of the “I’m a Celebrity…” personalities, jumped to their feet, bared their sequins and tortured us with yet another dreadful paso doble. This latter indignity alone – repeated as it is on a weekly basis and with no improvement or resolution in sight – has done nothing to help me with my own problems: and do you still think I should be a nice person? Do you still ask me what I have against support groups?

Now, I do admit to getting my feet wet in a support group or two. In fact, in the course of my life, I have sampled nearly every single one. I’ve searched and I’ve searched and I’ve searched. I’ve tried the religious fanatic support group, the groups for those who are obsessively punctual, the groups for those who are addicted to standing in queues (I endeavoured to establish chapters of these last two groups in Egypt, but they only attracted members of the first group, which was the one I had run away from). And then there were the vegetarian support groups, the bacon-addicts’ support groups, the new millennium support groups, the support groups for people who like Brussels’ sprouts, the support groups for people who want to destroy all the other support group. And even a support group for those who would like to join a support group, but not a group that would accept them.

But, alas, none of them did a fucking thing for me. But then I had an epiphany! Instead of searching for a group that might help me, I would start a group to help others worse off than me. Of course, finding a group worse off than myself made me face up to an insurmountable obstacle: When it comes to people worse off than me, I always ended up by throwing my hands up in the air, and shrieking, “Why the fuck should I help these losers? What did they ever do for me?” Of course, I could have started a group for those who feel they are too good to help others, but since that would have attracted almost everyone, I instinctively knew I was too good for that group, and so I rejected it.

And then, one night, I had an epiphany! What was the one segment of society that provided more support than any group, and yet received no support themselves? And the answer? Athletic Supporters! Think about it. Day in, day out, these brave little fellows are forced to live in the murkiest of slum dwellings. They carry unsecured, constantly shifting, heavy loads; they are manhandled by large muscular hands that continually fondle our supporters’ burdens as though they were sacks of plums. Can you imagine what the smell must be like in their sweatshops? And have they ever been heard to complain? Have they ever once asked for danger money? Have they ever threatened to go on strike? Not on your fucking nelly.

I ask you this: what do athletic supporters get in return for their hours of servitude? They get dropped on to the floor and stepped on, or else they are thrown into a bucket of bleach with fifty other supporters, many of whom are of foreign extraction. Or Welch. They are then left there overnight – and God only knows how many of them die of suffocation. But does anyone remember? Has anyone ever paid tribute to them in the News of the World? Has BBC-2 ever produced a documentary on their plight? And where are the obituaries in the Times? And why hasn’t Clare Balding taken them on as her cause? Quite simply, they are the forgotten ones; when they die, they are simply thrown into the incinerator. Yes, my friends, Athletic Supporters are truly the lowest and most despised members of our society.

When and if an Athletic Supporter is actually given a decent bath, do you think he is ever properly ironed? No, he is not. He is wadded up and stuffed willy-nilly into a drawer of underwear. And believe me, for any self-respecting athletic supporter, that is completely unsupportable! For underwear is very snobby when it comes to the lowly athletic supporter. Underwear think they are too good to cradle a furry sack of foetid, foul smelling testicles. And as for coming into actual physical contact with such an ill-mannered and unpredictable animal as a penis? Forget it. As far as underwear is concerned, the average penis doesn’t even know how to shake themselves off, and warrants an ASBO. They lisp, “Let the thupporter do the dirty work.” For according to underwear, Athletic Supporters are ignorant know-nothings who don’t know any better. They are the untouchables of the unmentionable world. Fit only for foreskin slime and suffocation and genital herpes and crotch rot! Why, most of them don’t even know what a designer label is!

On the other hand, underwear just… is! Underwear is a status symbol. It is quite simply. Le dernier cri!

I am going beg you, my friends, to open your hearts and – for a moment or two – thank God for your humble athletic supporters. Treat them with dignity. Occasionally, find it in your heart to wash yourself before asking for their support. They may be shy at first, because God only know they have suffered nothing but abuse in their lifetimes. But given enough time and patience… and, yes, niceness… you’ll find that they will start responding to you. They might even start loving you a little, in return. And when this happens, you will suddenly notice that they are more than willing to put an extra special something into their work. Your balls will – at the end of a busy day – be as fresh as they were at the beginning. Fresher than springtime! Fungal infections will be a thing of the past. And the happy, contented Athletic Supporters will even start urging your cricket box not to pinch you when you squish it with a cricket ball.

The benefits of having a happy, well-adjusted athletic supporter are endless. And for this reason I am soliciting your help. Running such a charity does not come cheap. Therefore, what I am asking is that, in lieu of the customary boxes of JumboGasoMart’s best-selling white port and cases of precooked InstaFlab Frozen Pizzas (each with a tonne of extra cheese) and lorry-loads of Velveeta Donuts for my birthday, please help me send a worthy athletic supporter, together with his loving wife – Mrs. Sports Bra – and his teenage daughters – Britney and Brandi Thong – on an all-expense-paid holiday to the Maldives. Please make your cheques payable to Johnners In The Raw Save the Athletic Supporters Fund, and send it care of this address. Thank you. And bless you, my children, for by contributing to this noble cause, you will be helping to make this world a happier, healthier, fresher, and… yes… nicer… place for each and every one of us.